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We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

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Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#31

Post by jon-wood »

pkorzeniewski wrote: post #14

I'll never understand how it's possible that government web sites cost so much, yet usually look like shit, work like shit and are easy to hack (at least in my country). I always get the feeling that companies that win the contracts are somehow related to people responsible for the decision, it's like "Hey, it's not our money, so let's milk the budget as much as possible!".

One of the few things I agree with our current government in the UK on is their move to bring government IT in house from external companies. That decision has led to Government Digital Services, who are building out http://gov.uk/, and a few other digital departments within government.

A friend of mine works at the Ministry of Justice, and told me recently he has the easiest job in the world, because even if he were to just sit at his desk and do nothing he'd be delivering a better service than the agencies that proceeded him, and saving the ministry huge amounts of money.

Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#32

Post by malaporte »

A colleague of mine used to be some kind of manager/director at that company (in another country though). He once described his former job as "milking the government".

They hire the lowest quality engineers (e.g. the cheapest), and then bill them outlandish $/hour to work for government agencies. The project plans are packed with useless stuff, and are designed to exceed initial estimations. They get paid by the hour...

Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#33

Post by chadwickthebold »

dkhenry wrote: post #22

Good thing we are giving the federal government control over the healthcare system ( and positioning them to take even more control as we move towards single payer ). I am sure they won't screw it up like they have the the roll out of this small portion of the system. Also I am really looking forwards to the day I can't get my kid seen by a doctor because there was a budget fight and the government shut down.

The affordable care act mandates people get health coverage, prevents denial of coverage due to pre-existing conditions, provides centralized services to purchase health coverage, and expands federal programs for medicare and medicaid. Your local doctor isn't going to refuse to see you because they are still paid by an insurance company, and not the federal government.

Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#34

Post by JPKab »

dkhenry wrote: post #22

Good thing we are giving the federal government control over the healthcare system ( and positioning them to take even more control as we move towards single payer ). I am sure they won't screw it up like they have the the roll out of this small portion of the system. Also I am really looking forwards to the day I can't get my kid seen by a doctor because there was a budget fight and the government shut down.

Please explain to me how an exchange stood up by the government which enables you to find a private insurance company to purchase insurance from is involving the government in your use of the private insurance.

The new system acts as a facilitator for people to purchase insurance on an open "exchange" market. The government has as much to do with what happens afterwards as the NYSE has to do with how my 80 shares of Exxon perform. If the stock goes down, I can surely blame the Exxon board, or an oil spill.... but it certainly has nothing to do with the NYSE.

You should read about a law before you talk about it.

Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#35

Post by arbuge »

smoyer wrote: post #21

Imagine what this community could build with more than half a billion dollars!

It is easy to see that. What's needed is somebody to shake up the whole government contract procurement system. A gigantic schlep right there...

Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#36

Post by josefresco »

wikiburner wrote: post #4

Scaling on the web is basically a solved issue for sites with such limited functionality. Even the CIA is using AWS, so I can't believe the regulatory and security hurdles were prohibitive. To spend this kind of money on sites with these kinds of results is just disgraceful: "The site is so busted that, as of a couple days ago, the number of people that successfully purchased healthcare through it was in the 'single…

Beware of potentially politically motivated garbage quotes. The referenced Washington Post article quoted an "insurance industry official" who would only speak anonymously:

“Very, very few people that we’re aware of have enrolled in the federal exchange,” said one insurance industry official, who like many in the industry, spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for possibly offending the Obama administration. “We are talking single digits.”

So one guy allegedly in the "insurance industry" who won't give his name has said enrollment has been in the single digits. Not overall enrollment mind you, just what this one guy has seen come across his desk.

But that's how this article has been spun. Millions of people! single digit success rate! as reported by "some guy". A sad state of affairs indeed.

Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#37

Post by zachrose »

There are a lot of interesting things to say about a $634M website that didn’t work when it should have, but what pops out at me here is the description of “poorly written code.”

This article even links directly to some of the code, which A) looks fine? and B) is like “Yeah, the problem wasn’t with procurement regulations or clear requirements or public-private cronyism or managerial competence, it was that damn person who told the computer what to do and the computer didn’t do the right thing.”

Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#38

Post by mseebach »

Osmium wrote: post #8
Tloewald wrote: post #7

> the factors that play into which companies receive government contracts, a process called “procurement,” are fundamentally broken This.

How would you fix it? I could imagine a competitive process, e.g. pay a number of different companies to start producing their solution in parallel. And then at the end of 3 months, pick the one(s) that looks the most promising and pay them to continue with it. It sounds wasteful, but I just don't see a better way, because people seem incapable of judging beforehand which companies are actually capable of providing o…

Generally: get government out of the business of procuring custom software and shift to procuring outcomes.

Something like these healthcare exchanges should have been put to the market in a from where the revenue is directly tied to the end goal: The successful purchase of health insurance by customers (or whatever is the case here, I'm not intimately familiar with the mechanics). Have providers bid on the full thing by revenue pr. successful transaction + an SLA that deducts an appropriate penalty if it isn't met.

Ideally, you don't even need to pick a winner, you can just say that any provider that successfully operates such a marketplace will get the revenue per transaction and let the market sort it out. End users will gravitate towards the sites that are fast and easy to use, "Consumer Reports" will test them etc. Lean, agile shops will win. Clunky, well-connected, but technically unsophisticated government contractors will fail.

Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#39

Post by jonespen »

pkorzeniewski wrote: post #14

I'll never understand how it's possible that government web sites cost so much, yet usually look like shit, work like shit and are easy to hack (at least in my country). I always get the feeling that companies that win the contracts are somehow related to people responsible for the decision, it's like "Hey, it's not our money, so let's milk the budget as much as possible!".

No idea what it costs, but GDS[1] is doing a pretty good job on http://gov.uk. My guess is that only the savings on closing hundreds of sites [2] justifies it. Maybe it also prevents some of the uk citizens from not going nuts while trying to do gov business online ;)

[1] http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/ [2] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/hundreds-of-government-we...

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