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Forget for a moment that the reason for this website is a poorly designed and disastrous law that should have never been passed in the first place.

What matters now, in that there is some ability to actually do something about it, is keeping the monstrosity of this website in the public’s eye and holding the administration accountable for the long series of poor choices made, as well as the long series guaranteed to come.

First, because of the way the first contract was bid, the old disaster can’t be torn out from the roots and replaced entirely. That would open the old contractor to liabilities and the bidding process to congressional scrutiny. It should, but admitting failure is not an option here. This means a portion of the old poor decisions must remain, at least for a bit. This will drag down the replacement efforts, no matter how well they proceed.

Second, any well functioning IT system has an appropriately sized testing and rollout plan. Not here, schedule will not allow it. large swaths of code will be load tested for the first time in production, little to no security and penetration testing will occur, and significant risks will be accepted... often unknowingly. This means your personal information will be at risk as a user, insurance companies will be exposed to hackers and lawsuits, and all without accountability.

Third, when you pull an “all hands on deck” scramble on a complex problem, you are forced to borrow preassembled components from elsewhere and try to make them fit together. There are going to be major integration issues as each stakeholder shoves their products into the system, each with their own interfaces, data formats, and system requirements. The boutique interface translators will be a further drag on development and performance. They would also be a drag on testing, but the testing won’t actually occur.

Fourth, the political pressure is going to be a particular harm to the efforts. The administration has not been accommodating of criticism or eager to admit its faults, there is no indication this will be any different. Project manager, no matter how capable, will have a constant press by nameless bureaucrats to deliver successes they can present to the public quickly. They will shift priorities, undermine the project management at every turn and dissolve into the ether when called out for their meddling.

Long story short, this is going to be a disaster for a long time

Long story short, this is going to be a disaster for a long time

You've clearly been in this industry for a long time. You've done a damned good analysis.

I cannot fault a single one of your points.

I would add, the only way the current system could EVER work is if they standardized all integration interfaces. Kinda a Henry Ford approach to development at the government level. All data objects would need to be standardized, all components would need to have the same interfaces.

The only industry attempts I have seen that have (relatively) succeeded were in EDI, and in another venue (communications protocol) TCP-IP (and all related protocols). Those got pretty close to standardization.

But the GOVERNMENT? Succeeding at a standarization like THIS? I suppose ADA did a reasonable job but that was driven by the defense INDUSTRY, not the government.

This thing may come to reliable fruition in 10 years with the current 'bandage' approach. They'd save 5 years if they scrapped and restarted. The only *true*, *bulletproof* solution is a universal government standardization, and that would take at least 3 years right off the rip.