Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Healthcare.gov: Code by the People, for the People, Released Back to the People

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 42 posts

Re: Healthcare.gov: Code by the People, for the People, Released Back to the People

#11

Post by digiphile »

smacktoward wrote: post #9
adolph wrote: post #7

Last week, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) relaunched Healthcare.gov with a new appearance and modern technology that is unusual in federal-government websites. The article seems to be about a promotional/propaganda CMS for the government, am I missing something? "This is such a lean site," said Jon Booth "This is our ultimate dogfooding experience," said Eric Gundersen "The work that…

It is definitely amazing how brilliant and successful every decision on a project turns out to be when you only interview the people who made those decisions!

I didn't just interview the people who made those decisions. I've talked to dozens of federal and state CIOs over the years, along with many contractors and Web developers. The consensus amongst insiders and industry observers is that this approach and outcome are genuinely novel and innovative in the government space, which is why I wrote the feature to begin with, starting months ago.

Re: Healthcare.gov: Code by the People, for the People, Released Back to the People

#12

Post by digiphile »

jmedwards wrote: post #5

The UK Government Digital Service still kicks its ass at (a) startup methods) and (b) execution :-) http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/ https://www.gov.uk/ https://www.gov.uk/designprinciples

It may come as no surprise that Mullen cited the GDS team as an inspiration.

Re: Healthcare.gov: Code by the People, for the People, Released Back to the People

#13

Post by digiphile »

adolph wrote: post #7

Last week, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) relaunched Healthcare.gov with a new appearance and modern technology that is unusual in federal-government websites. The article seems to be about a promotional/propaganda CMS for the government, am I missing something? "This is such a lean site," said Jon Booth "This is our ultimate dogfooding experience," said Eric Gundersen "The work that…

Is educating the uninsured about the provisions of a law that applied to them "propaganda?"

Re: Healthcare.gov: Code by the People, for the People, Released Back to the People

#14

Post by smacktoward »

digiphile wrote: post #11
smacktoward wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is definitely amazing how brilliant and successful every decision on a project turns out to be when you only interview the people who made those decisions!

I didn't just interview the people who made those decisions. I've talked to dozens of federal and state CIOs over the years, along with many contractors and Web developers. The consensus amongst insiders and industry observers is that this approach and outcome are genuinely novel and innovative in the government space, which is why I wrote the feature to begin with, starting months ago.

This would have been more evident if any of those people had been quoted in the story. It also would have made the story more compelling -- as it stands, it reads like a bunch of colleagues congratulating each other on what fine work they have done.

Re: Healthcare.gov: Code by the People, for the People, Released Back to the People

#15

Post by digiphile »

smacktoward wrote: post #14
digiphile wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't just interview the people who made those decisions. I've talked to dozens of federal and state CIOs over the years, along with many contractors and Web developers. The consensus amongst insiders and industry observers is that this approach and outcome are genuinely novel and innovative in the government space, which is why I wrote the feature to begin with, starting months ago.

This would have been more evident if any of those people had been quoted in the story. It also would have made the story more compelling -- as it stands, it reads like a bunch of colleagues congratulating each other on what fine work they have done.

Fair point. And ouch, I think. Just so it's clear, I'm not their colleague -- and the contractors in question weren't obligated to praise CMS. I'd hoped that readers would find the perspective of the writer useful, in addition to the comments of the principals, whose interests are obvious. Thank you for the feedback.

Re: Healthcare.gov: Code by the People, for the People, Released Back to the People

#16

Post by digiphile »

damncabbage wrote: post #2

A link to the GitHub source: https://github.com/CMSgov/healthcare.gov (The article buries the link to the page with the link: https://www.healthcare.gov/developers )

Thank you for sharing the link to github. At the time of submission, the code wasn't available yet there.

Re: Healthcare.gov: Code by the People, for the People, Released Back to the People

#17

Post by adolph »

digiphile wrote: post #13
adolph wrote: post #7

Last week, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) relaunched Healthcare.gov with a new appearance and modern technology that is unusual in federal-government websites. The article seems to be about a promotional/propaganda CMS for the government, am I missing something? "This is such a lean site," said Jon Booth "This is our ultimate dogfooding experience," said Eric Gundersen "The work that…

Is educating the uninsured about the provisions of a law that applied to them "propaganda?"

Sure, propaganda can be educational. I read white papers, ads or other industrial propaganda just like anyone. My first word was promotion and I added propaganda afterward, maybe it added too much negativity, sorry.

On the other hand, when reading the article I was disappointed that the article wasn't about the actual exchanges to facilitate finding and purchasing insurance. It was about building a CMS to help the government communicate about [ vaporware (too negative) | something coming soon (rose colored glasses on)].

[Adding more:] Since you seem to be identifying as the author, thank you for sharing this information about the site. It must have been very interesting to see the modern web dev meet gov.

Adding/editing content by github pull request isn't tremendously impressive. I'm sure the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will appreciate volunteer effort. However, pull requests aren't an avenue for contributions by people outside of a very limited population. It isn't a community/software moderated hive-mind like Wikipedia or StackExchange and I think that the difference goes back to the word propaganda.

Education takes many forms and propaganda is a description of education at its most one-sided and didactic. This website will have the information that the CMS thinks will (and wants to) use for many purposes including "educating the uninsured." As modern as the technology stack is, the human stack did not change. I'm sure there will be non-governmental initiated wikis and Q/A websites for people to cooperatively educate themselves about the real deal, so a fresh coat of paint on the status quo isn't so bad.

Re: Healthcare.gov: Code by the People, for the People, Released Back to the People

#18

Post by epoxyhockey »

imjared wrote: post #4

The folks at Development Seed are doing really awesome work between Prose and MapBox and it's great to see them get some recognition for it. Also a great plug for Jekyll in general. While there can certainly be more worrisome factors than cost for a site, site performance should be one of the most important issues when launching. By completely getting rid of a backing database, page lookup times can be reduced dramat…

The folks at Development Seed are doing really awesome work

I am also a member of the Development Seed fan club, having met many of the team members. Though, I feel like they should update their PR statement. Every time they are mentioned in an article, the Drupal past comes out: The startup first made its mark in the DC tech scene consulting on Drupal I think we can all agree that mentioning one's history working with Drupal is not going to convey a feeling of cutting edge work by a, frankly, team of brilliant engineers like Dev Seed. I have done work with Drupal in the past, yet it does not appear on my resume.

Instead, they could be saying something like: Development Seed, makers of Mapbox and Tile Mill, which directly competes with Google Maps products, and in many ways is better, develops and promotes technologies and methodologies reminiscent of Bay Area start-ups.

These guys really do not get enough credit, even with a minor mention in the Atlantic article.

Re: Healthcare.gov: Code by the People, for the People, Released Back to the People

#19

Post by boneheadmed »

Sorry, not feeling very patriotic about this. "by the people, for the people, released back to the people." Meanwhile those of the people who are physicians have had their fees sequestered by 2% http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/781630 and are awash in extra paperwork for trying to prescribe something as simple as diabetic test strips as funding is tightened: http://www.pharmacist.com/cms-cuts-reimbursement-diabetes-te...

Re: Healthcare.gov: Code by the People, for the People, Released Back to the People

#20

Post by nopal »

I'm very eager to see how they handle the actual exchange code.

Jekyll and static HTML make a lot of sense for a marketing/informational site (which this appears to be right now), but at some point, they're going to need a dynamic backend (right?). These exchanges will need to aggregate plan info from lots of different insurance carriers and display plans to people based on various bits of user-specific info. Perhaps they can generate static info pages for all of the plans and redirect people to these pages via JavaScript and then pass the actual enrollment off to the insurance companies.

If they have to support enrollment and dynamic content, it will be interesting to see how they do so while adhering to their principles of simplicity.

If they don't, it will be an interesting example of how to embrace simple solutions where possible while preventing scope creep.

Either way, I'm glad to see this type of innovative development happening.

Post reply on HN