Government Web Sites Need Sleep, Too.

The Government: Working for you (unless it’s not).

There is a database maintained by the Securities and Exchange Commission that goes to sleep at night. If you visit this site after a certain hour the page reads: “Investment Adviser Public Disclosure is currently unavailable. Please revisit the site during operational hours.”

I’m glad that the database can get dinner, go home, kiss the kids, get some shut eye. This is every night, mind you.

The Securities and Exchange Commission maintains this publicly accessible web site to disseminate information about Registered Investment Advisors (basically firms that manage money and agree to SEC oversight of their businesses. More complete definition here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_Investment_Advisor).

I can only think that they close the site to dissuade hackers. Perhaps the SEC staff can’t monitor this database at 3am. But neither can an investor in Asia (e.g., Japan: 13 hours ahead of EST) check up on money managers at this hour. Why not?

We’re in a global economy and a sleepy web site strikes me as very odd. Am I nuts or is this just bizarre?