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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

#71

Post by puller »

tokenadult wrote: post #57

National Public Radio had a good report on 8 October 2013, "Health Exchange Tech Problems Point To A Thornier Issue," http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/10/08/230424... that discusses the broader issue of United States federal government contracting for information technology services. Some reforms are suggested in that story that would help more competent startup companies compete against the establishe…

The difference between established federal contractors and startups disappears if startups get federal contracts. I know a lot of startups would like a better shot at that cash, but if the problem is in the incentives then it's no help to get different people doing the same things.

If there are already problems with how federal contracts are awarded, it is hard to imagine that wholesale deregulation is going to result in a more selective process. For example, blind removal of lowest-bidder requirements would make larger-scale corruption even easier.

There are legitimate complaints and federal contracting needs work, but what kind of work? Let's not underestimate how much worse we can make it. The money on the table is ample incentive for people to propose innocent-sounding reforms which really just open up the taps or redirect them to different parties rather than increasing efficiency.

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

#72

Post by DanielBMarkham »

001sky wrote: post #67
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #29

Political organizations exist for political reasons. So if you get elected to "do something" about orphans, you'll create an organization to do something. The goal of this organization is political: appear to be making progress on the orphan problem. At the very least, do not appear in the news as an example of government waste. The current website problem is a political failure -- it looks bad. But that's just a sho…

The problem with this logic is that carte balche on an amex is no way to run a government, even if every dime spent is sucessful in "keeping you in power". To the extent that one is rationalizing the status quo, it is pointing out the obvious. Unfortunately, the math no longer works and the system is going to be reset as someone else has to pick up the tab. It may be republicans or it may be your children. But whomev…

When the U.S. was founded, slavery was a key concern. Jefferson and others knew that slavery couldn't last, but there was no way to get agreement on it.

So what did they do? They left the problem to future generations to solve. And the result involved a lot of bloodshed.

In any system of government, there's always going to be a strong desire to kick problems down the road for somebody else to solve. I think the best we can hope for is some structures in place to minimize this, but you'll never get rid of it completely.

What we see now is just 250 years or so of this thinking, with the default solution of letting somebody else handle it growing more powerful with each passing year.

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

#73

Post by Osmium »

smackfu wrote: post #52
Osmium wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sounds awesome! I'll put in a bid, then hire the cheapest programmers I can to make it look like I did some work, then of course I'll lose the competition and still get paid for 3 months. Repeat and you have a viable business. And you never need to actually support software after the 3 months is up.

Well, you wouldn't let anyone enter the process: there'd still have to be an initial filter. After that, presumably promise of much much higher future profits for the full contract and prestige (i.e. the free advertising that would come from having done it) would be sufficient. But it was just an idea anyway.

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

#74

Post by dagw »

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…

Some bids actually work kind of like that, especially in the realms or architecture and urban planning. However the money you get paid for those 3 month is often not enough to cover the expenses of doing a good job. So if you want to stand a chance of winning you end up having to work for 'free' and just hope you win so you can recoup those costs.

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

#75

Post by dfxm12 »

dfc wrote: post #54
JPKab wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is truly an awful scenario. As I stated recently in a comment on this subject, Federal contracting is a Rent Seeking scenario: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_seeking I have a weird role: I work at a company which does tons of Federal contracts, but also has lots of private sector work. I keep my sanity by doing short term consulting with private clients. There are some sharp people working the Federal side, but…

There are some sharp people working the Federal side, but it really is awful. What are you referring to with "it"? The folks at your company who do federal IT work? Government IT employees? Federal IT consulting?

the parent post seems to be referring to bidding for & working with the federal government on government contracts.

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

#77

Post by hga »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #53

I lost my group health plan, which I had for fifteen years, recently so I has experienced the web site first hand :-) My latest complaint: I logged in many times last week to fill in information, a bit at a time before I lost access. Then starting Sunday morning I could no longer login. On the phone last night I was told that they had wiped all stored passwords and to follow the "I don't remember my password" link. C…

Strange, it was national news they'd wiped all passwords ... as you say, we can't imagine why that wasn't in a banner message.

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

#78

Post by arikrak »

Why did the government need to build any website? Why couldn't they just release data, and pass rules that health companies release data? Many websites would have offered to help bring the data to the users and the Government could have linked to some officially recognized ones.

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

#79

Post by hga »

zachrose wrote: post #37

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 pers…

We've reached ... some sort of level when Drudge includes a highest level (most prominent on the page, at the very top left) link to a page of its Javascript: https://www.healthcare.gov/marketplace/global/en_US/registra...

It's titled "Crazzzzzzzy code..."

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