Posted on 10/22/2013 10:43:31 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The White House has tabbed former acting Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Jeff Zients to work with the team overseeing repairs to the ObamaCare website.
Zients, who served as the White House Chief Performance Officer, was named in September as the director of the National Economic Council. According to the administration, he will transition into that role at the end of this year.
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Zients started on Monday to provide “short-term advice, assessments and recommendations” in a blog post obtained earlier on Tuesday by Bloomberg.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said Zients was tabbed because he was "an expert in the field of effective management."
Carney said HHS would be "tapping his experience and expertise as they address the challenges which have come up with the administration of the website."
The White House press secretary was asked if bringing in Zients was an attempt to sideline Sebelius, but Carney sidestepped the question, saying simply that the former acting OMB director would be "working alongside HHS's team."
Carney described Zients's role as a "short-term assignment" and that he would be providing "advice, assessments and recommendations."
Zients joined the administration in 2009 as the deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget. A private equity and corporate management specialist, Zients twice served as acting budget director and led an effort to reorganize federal agencies to eliminate inefficiencies.
In his role as Chief Performance Officer, Zients lead an "Accountable Government Initiative" designed to reform how the government purchased and maintained its information technology services. Under his direction, the administration in 2010 temporarily halted $3 billion in technology projects in an attempt to reduce costs and improve technology functionality.
Later that year, Zients told the Northern Virginia Technology Council that government IT management "needs to be more agile, more adaptable to new technologies, more accountable and more focused on results."
Too often, IT projects are over budget, behind schedule and fail to deliver results,” he added, according to FCW. “Fixing IT is central to everything we are trying to do. IT is our top priority.”
“Jeff has a sterling reputation as a business leader, and he earned the admiration and respect of everyone he worked with during his four years in leadership positions at the Office of Management and Budget,” President Obama said in a statement in September.
On Monday, the president admitted the ObamaCare website "hasn't worked as smoothly as it was supposed to work."
Obama said the administration was undertaking a "tech surge" to fix the problems that have plagued the site since its launch at the beginning of the month.
"We’ve got people working overtime, 24/7, to boost capacity and address the problems," Obama said. "Experts from some of America’s top private-sector tech companies who, by the way, have seen things like this happen before, they want it to work. They're reaching out. They're offering to send help. We’ve had some of the best IT talent in the entire country join the team."
They hired another govenment guy for oversight to fix it.
What the Obamadork really means is that they are “...experts in giving me illegal funding under the table.”
He is an incompetent, undereducated, technically illiterate piece of excrement.
Slime, he is, pure slime.
LOL.
Of course.
AT BEST, the next layer is ready to seamlessly interface with that front-end. If they change the front-end (and that's what they're struggling to do) then they will mess up the interface to the next processing layer.
Fixing the current problem will both create and reveal the next layer of problems.
We are multiple iterations away from having anything that might function.
What typically happens when you crank the pressure on IT guys up to 11 is that they’ll build a Hollywood Set App that has the look and feel of working, but is all done with dummy data and does not actually link-up to any working system. Just like the buildings on a movie lot have no back or sides.
Keeps the heat off your back for at least a little while longer.
You clearly know what you’re talking about. If your assignment were to fix it, how would you approach it?
But before starting over, they need to debrief the low level programmers and ask "What did we do wrong?" The worker bees tend to know the fundamental mistakes either when they are made or shortly thereafter -- but management doesn't want to hear about it (they don't have time to do it right, they'll just take the time later to fix it).
A debrief of the existing team would likely reveal a better architectural and organizational approach for the next attempt.
... and covering up.
IT projects have a surprisingly high failure rate. Some analysts suggest that as many as 1/3 of all development projects fail to reach a successful rollout. You can be sure that a project with 41 contractors and a gubmint official as the contract officer will be amongst the 33 percent. It’s like trying to re-architect a skyscraper when you’re building out the top floor.
Agreed but the problem usually isn't the IT team. Most of the time it's an uncertain and changing scope of work that kills a project. There have been reports of constant changes right up to the release date for HealthCare.gov.
A review of internal architectural diagrams obtained by the AP revealed the system's complexity. Insurance applicants have a host of personal information verified, including income and immigration status. The system connects to other federal computer networks, including ones at the Social Security Administration, IRS, Veterans Administration, Office of Personnel Management and the Peace Corps.".......... Insiders who worked on US health website describe high stress, complaints about major problems
. . . but you have to admit: it has certainly CHANGED THE SUBJECT !
Like WHERE HAS BENGHAZI GONE ?!
That makes way too much sense for government. I’m glad you’re on our side.
I’m not an IT guy but I have extensive management experience. Your approach would be spot on
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