Another Perspective of the Obamacare Website

Let me give you a different and maybe shocking perspective on the Obamacare website that I have not seen mentioned. When the site rolled out and failed enormously in October, it was reported that we (the American people) had already paid >$300 million on it and we had contractual obligations over the next few years that would bring the total expenditure to >$600 million.

Then, with all the foolish fumblings, panicked disclaimers and hiring more "experts" to fix what should not be broken, it developed that no one, not even the new "experts" were confident that they could fix the mess. Another round of hiring more "experts" ensued. The Obamacare Chinese Fire Drill figuratively accelerated around the bend in a cloud of oily engine smoke and parts flying off into the dust.

The first round total contract set us back >$600 mill. In my opinion, this next round of fix-it with even more geeks working on it will drive that cost up, at my guess, in the neighborhood of the original outlay, another ~$300 mill. which total gives us a figure approaching $1 billion. Imagine that! $1,000,000,000 for a commercial website.

In comparison, the USS Zumwalt, the US Navy's newest, largest and most high tech destroyer; THE MOST EXPENSIVE US WARSHIP EVER BUILT, has just been launched with a reported cost of $3,300,000,000.

This is merely 3.5x my (reasonable) estimation of the approximate total cost of the Obamacare website, if it is indeed fixed in the distracting brouhaha! These Zumwalt class ships, however, while being state of the art and effective, have also been cut from an original plan of 32 ships to merely 3 (see the article at the above link) because they are too expensive. I am not suggesting warships at any cost, of course, I would like to see this prudence be applied to other things we are faced with, most notably Obamacare and its supporting devices. Does anyone feel that the massive effort required to plan the minutiae of a new hull, weapons system and propulsion system should be in range of the effort/expense of a NON-state of the art commercial website? Even in Washington this beggars belief.

The comparative cost of two widely different things with different capabilities, form, and limitations is immaterial.

The real question is: how does the cost of the 0bamacare website compare with comparable websites accomplishing the same thing? The answer is, it almost certainly could have been done for $20 million. It absolutely could have been done for <$50 million.

These cost overruns give you a good idea of how non-competitive federal workers and government contractors are to people working on projects in private industry, why government over-promises and under-delivers, and why government should never be permitted to do anything whatsoever that does not involve actual governance.

Anyone who works in software development and has been involved in both government and private work will pretty much tell you that a productivity factor of 15:1 is not at all all surprising. What is surprising is that CGI, which has blown one large contract after another, continues to get gigs ... with anyone.

Ah yes.

I forgot your admitted position that you wish only the New York Times and your other beloved liberal sources to be remunerated by freeper readers. You never whine they should he posted in full.

How kind of you to admit outright that you are a shill. Once again.

Busted.

Again.

I forgot your admitted position that you wish only the New York Times and your other beloved liberal sources to be remunerated by freeper readers.

You should have no trouble finding a statement to that effect then.

You never whine they should he posted in full.

I never whine period.

How kind of you to admit outright that you are a shill. Once again.

It's a bit early for you to be drunk, so we'll just assume you're a dumbass.

Busted.

If you say so, Chief.

Makes you wonder how CGI is still on the GSA vendor list...

Wasn’t there also some mention of compartmentalized development of some sort, where the Govt broke it up into several different development efforts and the groups either didn’t or were not allowed to talk to each other? Then when it came time to bolt it all together, the integration points failed and all the stakeholders were shocked (shocked! I tell ya!).

So, take a vendor with a questionable delivery record and combine it with a paranoid, micro-managing customer-on-crack and you wind up with frankentein-deliverables that look like a lincoln-log project put together by a 4-year old using the braille-method in a dark room.

Sometimes the vendor bids on a contract with no idea how they will deliiver it using the tried and true consulting mantra, “ Do anything, Say anything, Be anything — Just close the deal. Don’t worry about delivery, it will take care of itself later”. The decision makers on the customer side have no idea if the vendor can deliver or not and never seem interested in verifying it. Getting through the procurement process red-tape, approvals and paperwork is an exhausting effort. Surely somewhere in that mountain of paperwork, the due-diligence was performed, or at least something that can plausibly pass as due-diligence was signed-off on.

Sometimes the customer is NOT always right. Sometimes the more valuable service is to slap the crack-pipe out of the customer’s mouth and drag them back to the realm of sanity -OR- you fire them as a client and move on to realistic engagements. But more often, the vendor is blinded by the dollar signs and charges ahead, damn the torpedoes. Telling themselves again, “Don’t worry about delivery, it will take care of itself”. The account rep flashes that practiced smile and reassures the customer that “It’s No Problem. We can get it done!” and sets expectations based on what the account rep *hopes* they can do, instead of what they *know* they can do.

In this case, it may be that the US Taxpayer was saddled with a worst case scenario on both sides of the procurement process. The “Perfect Storm” as far as IT engagements go.

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