Why a ‘tech surge’ isn’t going to save HealthCare.gov

Venture Beat ^ | 10/22/13 | Christina Farr

[privatedrive]

Journalist/historian David Halberstam coined the term “best and brightest” to describe the so-called experts who bungled the Vietnam War. It’s an unfortunate choice of phrase, particularly at a time of intense partisan conflict.

“It’s a terrible metaphor,” said Marc Sandalow, a political analyst with KCBS Radio (and formerly the longtime Washington D.C. bureau chief for the San Francisco Chronicle). ”The government should have had the best and brightest working on this website three years ago, but as it turns out, bureaucracy is complicated.”

Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/22/why-a-tech-surge-isnt-going-to-save-healthcare-gov/#PMmGdHgPeJI15EWa.99

[privatedrive]

From PC Magazine:

We love “wares” in this industry as noted below.
The Basic “Wares

hardware
software
firmware

The Traditional “Wares”

adware
courseware
groupware
liveware
malware
middleware
shareware
spyware
vaporware
wetware

Other “Wares”

abandonware

badware
beltware
betaware
bloatware
boardware
bridgeware
brochureware

censorware
charityware
cloudware
crapware
crimeware
crippleware
crossware
crudware

demoware
donationware
dribbleware

evolware
expireware

feeware
freeware

grayware
greenware
griddleware
guiltware

hookemware
hyperware

infoware

jobsware
junkware

Kruegerware

lockware

morphware

nagware

obnoxiousware

parasiteware
payware
peopleware
poachware
pushware

ransomware
reactionware
roomware

scareware
scumware
shelfware
shovelware
Slackware
slideware
snoopware
software
spamware
spyware
stackware
stealthware

thiefware
trashware
treeware
trialware

vendorware

---

But now, finally, we have a new ‘ware’ that covers all of the shitty software that has ever been written:

OBAMAWARE

[Psycho_Bunny]

Hadn’t heard that before....lol

[Personal Responsibility]

Why would the “best and brightest” get into government work when they can probably make 10x as much in the private sec......oh, I get it. Nevermind.

[OneWingedShark]

I hope President Palin says “Before my 8 years are up, we will send a team to mars to establish a colony”

While there are a lot of un/underemployed STEM-majors in the US, I'm not sure we have the technical expertise/competence in our ranks that we had during the moon-race.

Let me give an example:
Today, in my field, there are people graduating with CS degrees that simply do not instantly grasp the utility of restricting valid values from a type (i.e. subtyping*). This is used so often in mathematics that I cannot understand how someone could even lightly dismiss it. (Math ex: For all X, where X is a positive integer… is the restriction of Integer to the positive values.) This facility is rather uncommon in the type-systems of many programming languages.

Moreover, there are industry pressures for the "cookie cutter candidate" for employment, as most employment postings now have a requirement of X years of experience on their systems/environments for entry level employment… which pressures the management to implement in "lowest common denominator"-languages (which are usually fairly unwieldy for solving the problems of their project); which, in turn, pressures academia to churn out graduates trained in the lowest common denominator... to the detriment of needed skills.

And this is a technical industry we're talking about —Yes, there are exceptions— but the question is whether we are still capable of the expertise/competence that would be needed for a Mars-mission, which must be more complex/difficult than a mere moon-mission. (Logistics, different entry/landing-variables [Mars /= Earth], psychological/physiological health of the crew, etc.)

* Subtyping (and a strong type-system) can be used to greatly reduce complexity, thereby allowing easier proving/validation of programs.

[kawhill]

Excellent analogy!

[lepton]

“They didn’t even think it was necessary to test the system before rolling it out.”

Apparently they did test it. It failed under load of just a few hundred concurrent users...then they released it anyways and tried to claim that the problem was its popularity caused the usage to exceed the 30 million it was designed to handle.

[lepton]

It’s not secure...no https.

[Personal Responsibility]

”The government should have had the best and brightest working on this website three years ago, but as it turns out, bureaucracy is needlessly complicated.”
FTFY.

---

Bureaucracy is ALWAYS complicated. That’s it’s nature. It’s like saying water is wet.

[lepton]

“Is it designed to handle a DDoS? “

What we know of it so far is that is designed to carry out a DDoS.

[OneWingedShark]

Bureaucracy is ALWAYS complicated. That’s it’s nature. It’s like saying water is wet.

I agree.
My point was that bureaucrats will introduce into the system things of questionable value to detrimental effect. An example: when I was in Iraq we packed up the ACOGs (optical sights) into their little boxes, confirming the serial-numbers, into big trunks which were then sealed. We had all of them accounted for and packed in these sealed trunks and all of these trunks were accounted for… but then the Lieutenant said that we did it wrong, that a mere check was insufficient and that we needed to record which ACOGs were in which trunk. So we had to break the seals, unpack the trunk, and record which were in which trunk for all of the trunks.

(Note that if he'd given this instruction at the start, we could have simply marked presence w/ the crate number [1, 2, 3, etc] instead of a check-mark.)

[Hardraade]

Libs on Mars? Don’t bother. You might as well send manure.

Send them into the Sun instead. At least it would be an energy gain, if negligible.

[CodeJockey]

What one developer can code in 100 hours cannot be done by 4 developers each working 25 hours. Reason being with that the more bodies you add to a software development job, development time is lost by having to communicate what specific tasks each programmer will be responsible for and of course, assembling the pieces. Development time follows an exponential curve. Adding more coders to a late software project will not result in more code written.

Been programming 101 known since the dawn of programming.

[SVTCobra03]

I hope President Palin says “Before my 8 years are up, we will send a team to mars to establish a colony”

Then send all the liberals there.

[Windflier]

President Palin

I still like the sound of that, and would do most anything to help it come true.

[cableguymn]

All that dark energy on the sun? our luck they would put the sun out.

[petitfour]

Best and brightest? Define that.

Obama followers? Instant negative there. Obamacare is doomed to not work.

[cableguymn]

I work on the ground as a structured cabling specialist. I also do hardware support (parts swaps and installs, point of sale mostly) I am over 40. I am so busy I can’t keep up.

There are kids in this field. Lots of them. Companies I deal with who will pay my rates say the kids are morons. Even at much lower rates they won’t use them. These idiots will bill 10 bucks an hour as a contractor.. 10 bucks?!?!? I’ve seen their work, it’s awful. Wire everywhere. along the floor, strung like a clothes line, equipment hanging by wires.. Yikes is all I can say. They are not even worth the 10 dollar bill.

We’re screwed.

[cuban leaf]

JFK. Said before the decade is out.

---

Yes. Imagine if he had said, “before the year is out”?
That’s my point. You can say it, but it doesn’t mean it’s within the realm of possibility. That’s one of the problems Obama has. He seems to think he can speak things into existence and then hope later that people forget.

[OneWingedShark]

I work on the ground as a structured cabling specialist. I also do hardware support (parts swaps and installs, point of sale mostly) I am over 40. I am so busy I can’t keep up.

If your company was smart (assuming you're not self-employed) they'd give you some input on young hires and a bonus for training them, and then apprentice them to you. (...and do all the same for their competent "old timers".)

Part of the problem I've seen from the "seeking employment" side of things is that the companies are loathe to do any training on their new hires, wanting "cookie-cutter candidates". (Might be different in your line of work.)

[cableguymn]

I am the company ;)