absolutely!!!
Posted on 10/20/2013 2:10:29 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
The Department of Health and Human Services said Sunday it was bringing in outside help to resolve some of the technical woes that have beset the federally run insurance exchanges, which the agency acknowledged “has not lived up to the expectations of the American people.”
“We are committed to doing better,” agency officials said in a blog post that also said that “our team is bringing in some of the best and brightest from both inside and outside government to scrub in with the team and help improve healthcare.gov.”
Spokespeople for the agency didn’t immediately respond to questions seeking more information about the development, which it is billing as a “tech surge.”
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.wsj.com ...
“Sorry, Mr. Healthcare Official, the “best and brightest” are all gainfully employed at Google, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, Facebook, LinkedIn, Zillow, Trulia, SalesForce.com, et al. You get the “worst and dimmest” because you are government and who in their right mind would work for you? You don’t offer anybody the chance to be a millionaire or maybe even a billionaire. Unless you’re a CEO crony corporatist crook, that is.”
You make a good point.
Been there, done that (or rather, refused to get involved when I could.) A software disaster of this magnitude takes in my experience years to fix.
actually they are very adroit thieves
Severe punishment beyond prison time is in order
The tumbrels must roll
Another few billion squandered will do the trick. To screw up this much you really need a union.
Two approaches need to take place on this. They need to happen concurrently:
1.) Hearings on why the system originally failed. Subpoena EVERYTHING related to the effort.
2.) Hearings on whether this surge effort to “fix” the problems is adhering to government contracting law. Because the way I hear this the Obama Administration is definitely going down the road of “ask forgiveness not permission” and the “fixes” will happen in a highly illegal contracting environment.
absolutely!!!
Number two is key.
WaPo: “Even now, administration officials are declining to disclose many details about the debugging effort. They will not say how many experts — whom they describe as “the best and the brightest” — are on the team, when the team began its work or how soon the site’s flaws might be corrected. Still, in talking about the repairs, administration officials for the first time conceded that the site’s problems extend beyond well-publicized front-end obstacles, such as with setting up a personal account.”
Technology is NEVER a substitute for good management (decision making)
And who will be determining who "the best and the brightest" are? How will the administration know?
Will there be a new turkey as project manager, willing to serve as sacrificial lamb?
The administration appears already to have made a political decision not to do a redesign and rewrite - suppose that doesn't work? What will they do then?
Has anyone considered how expensive and time-consuming it will be to maintain this turkey, what with all the hastily applied patches (that likely will cause other "glitches")? OMG!!! Heaven forbid that anyone should do any thinking instead of running around like chickens with their heads off.
It would take nothing less than scrapping the entire existing system and starting with an ARCHITECTURALLY SOUND DESIGN.
And at a minimum, it would take 2 to 5 years.
No matter how many warm bodies you throw at it.
This thing is going to be (more of) the same CF.
I’ve got ya by 10 years, and I agree with your assessment.
Hey Laz, will this be like Obama’s “surge” in Afghanistan?
Headline: Obama to increase tech force by 10,000 in effort
to conquer glitches.
Headline: Obama to pull tech troops out after Christmas...
Headline: Glitches now control half of province...
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.
The only solution is a nimble team led by amazing people, or in this case, 50 to 100 nimble teams.
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