# Obamacare "Tech Surge" **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 21, 2013, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamacare-tech-surge/671838 "2013-10-21T17:43:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![JXJohns](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jxjohns/32/469_2.png) [@JXJohns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JXJohns)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2013, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamacare-tech-surge/671838/241 "2013-11-14T17:52:57Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > If you seriously want a \*cite \*for our being better off for having something like UHC than not, then you haven’t been paying enough attention to the world outside for the last few years for one to convince you. My reply from an earlier post: Not really looking for a cite, but your broad brush painted me incorrectly. I have been monitoring this [healthcare.gov](http://healthcare.gov) launch from the perspective of 20+ years experience in software development and project management. The amount of BS that is coming from the Feds as well as their staunch defenders has been nauseating. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2013, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamacare-tech-surge/671838/242 "2013-11-14T17:55:07Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > [This just in:](http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/06/healthcare-obama-entrepreneurs-twitter/) > > “We were working 24/7, working in very, very rapid cycles, with very, very short deadlines and milestones. We were working in a very, very nimble hyper consumer focused way, all fused in this kind of maelstrom of pizza, Mountain Dew, and all nighters, and you know, idealism.” > > - Tood Park, Chief Technology Officer at HHS. > > Sounds like a great way to run the country. Fixing the ACA website is a task, not a country. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2013, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamacare-tech-surge/671838/243 "2013-11-14T20:21:00Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > See comments above, **Flyer**. > > Nobody said they do not share responsibility. The primary responsibility for fucking up obviously belongs with the people who were allegedly expert enough (including by their own claims when bidding the job), and well-paid enough, not to fuck up, though. Your need to blame Obama for it (despite couching the Republicans’ role under your term “the Feds” - cute, that) does not change that fact. Obama is to blame for much. Look, I’m a software engineer. I know that projects often blow their schedule and budget. Software is hard. And yes, contractors can screw up. And it may be that this contractor did, but we don’t know that yet. But what we DO know is that a competent leadership team on a project this size will know if it’s going into the weeds, and will have mitigation strategies. It will have tollgate reviews, backup plans if the delivery date is missed, etc. A competent leadership team will also make sure that the requirements for the system are known up-front, and will resist making changes to the requirements in mid-stream and for damned sure there will be a cutoff date by which no more changes will be allowed. A leadership team that is behaving ethically will not cut down the testing phase of any engineering project in order to meet schedule. No one with a brain will schedule a multi-year software project without leaving some breathing room for the schedule to grow. The Obama administration did NONE of this. They appointed political functionaries to lead engineering project management roles. They wouldn’t even allow the teams to share freaking architectural diagrams for fear that the dastardly Republicans would see them. They held back major requirements until after the election for political reasons. When they were warned that requirements changes were complicating the project, they didn’t listen and kept tinkering right up until the end, including adding a massive architectural requirement right near the end of the project. And Obama got plenty of warnings. One of his own Obamacare architects was writing him strongly-worded letters about his poor choices for project management and the impossible schedules he was demanding, and he was ignored. The execs at the insurance companies had several meetings with him in which they warned that the project was at risk of failure. CGI went to the White House several times to warn them that the project was headed for failure. They were also ignored. When they told the White House that the schedule couldn’t be achieved, the response was, “Too bad. The schedule is what it is. Figure it out.” As an engineer, does that not set off any alarm bells with you? What would you think of a manager who responded to your concerns like that? Then, with faced with the inevitable fact that the project would not be completed on time, their reaction was to cancel the testing phase. In my mind (and I’m hoping in yours, since you’re a professional engineer), this is borderline criminal negligence. Would YOU ever sign off on an aircraft if your management decided to deliver it without flight testing it so they could meet a deadline? Especially if management was telling the customer that the project went smoothly, was fully completed, and everything was perfect? Then, when that wasn’t enough, they canceled the security audit, despite the presence of several known ‘severe’ security threats (and God knows how many unknown ones that a proper security audit would find). Their response to that was to redact the threats in the reports in the hope that hackers wouldn’t learn of them, and ship anyway. Then when it became clear that even with all their shortcuts they still wouldn’t be code-complete by the deadline, and despite the fact that their one load-test carried out just before launch crashed the system with just 200 users, they STILL claimed to the American people that everything was perfect and on schedule. And when the system immediately failed upon first contact with the public as it absolutely had to, Obama claimed he had no idea of any of this, and learned about it on the news with everyone else. The man’s a compulsive liar. A few weeks before the rollout, the contractors had to give a demonstration of the system to the White House. At this point in the development cycle the system should have been installed, thoroughly tested, and ready to go. In reality, it didn’t even work at all. The _architecture_ for it was only 69% complete. So, the project team mocked one up in Adobe freaking’ Captivate and showed that to the President, and he accepted it. The incompetence on display there is breathtaking. So, no, Obama isn’t at fault for any specific code failures or errors that contractors made. If the result had been a regrettable extension of the project deadline, I wouldn’t hold him at fault for much, other than enabling requirements creep and underestimating the task in the first place. But the decisions to cut testing, to hide security flaws, to accept a mockup in a final acceptance review, and to ship a product that he knew was broken while lying about its problems is all on Obama. And these are serious failures of leadership, competence, and ethics. They are much more severe than failures in coding. And if this was the leadership team at a private company and Obama was the CEO, you’d be leading the charge to have him fired, fined, or thrown in jail. ---
**Author:** ![dba\_Fred](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c37758/32.png) [@dba\_Fred](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dba_Fred)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2013, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamacare-tech-surge/671838/244 "2013-11-15T15:09:28Z")
WASHINGTON) – The federal government has spent [“north of 600 million” dollars](http://www.630wpro.com/common/more.php?m=58&ts=1384432504&article=D6935ED04CB311E3B51EFEFDADE6840A&mode=2) through the end of September on the new online federal insurance portal, a top GAO official testified Wednesday. This is the first official estimate of what has been spent to date. David Powner, director of IT management issues at the GAO, told the House Oversight Committee that the cost figure to date covers CMS, HHS, and other agency spending connected to the site and associated data hub. He said the estimate is based on documents from the Office of Management and Budget. As for how much more it’s going to cost to fix it: “We’re kind of blind to that,” Powner said. “I think that’s a key question, how much that will end up being." No one else on the panel could provide a cost estimate for the repairs. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2013, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamacare-tech-surge/671838/245 "2013-11-15T18:01:33Z")
And doesn’t that conflict mightily with the claim that the web site will be fixed by Nov. 30? If that was truly the case, we’d know the cost with a fair amount of precision. That they can’t even guess at how much the fixes will cost means Nov. 30 is a charade and they’ve been caught in yet another of the many lies this administration has spewed out over this law. ---
**Author:** ![CJJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecc23a/32.png) [@CJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CJJ)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2013, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamacare-tech-surge/671838/246 "2013-11-15T18:07:11Z")
David Auerbach over at [Slate](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2013/10/problems_with_healthcare_gov_cronyism_bad_management_and_too_many_cooks.html) has a good piece on how the tech side of [heathcare.gov](http://heathcare.gov) failed: > [@](#): > > The number of players is considerably larger than just front-end architects Development Seed and back-end developers CGI Federal, although the government is saying very little about who’s responsible… > > By digging through GAO reports, however, I’ve picked out a handful of key players. One is Booz Allen, the people who brought you Edward Snowden. Despite getting $6 million for “Exchange IT integration support,” they now claim that they “did no IT work themselves.”…Then there’s CGI Federal, of course, who got the largest set of contracts, worth $88 million, for “FFE information technology and [healthcare.gov](http://healthcare.gov),” as well as doing nine state exchanges. Their spokesperson’s statement is a model of buck-passing: “We are spending 24 hours a day, seven days a week working with our client and working with our partners in order to stabilize the enrollment [process] and finish the roll-out of this very complex project.” > > But which partners? The most interesting is Quality Software Solutions Inc. (QSSI). Despite the laughable name and inexplicable slogans such as “Quality is a Q word”—hard to argue with, I guess—they’ve been doing health care IT since 1997, and got $55 million for [healthcare.gov](http://healthcare.gov)’s data hub in contracts finalized in January 2012. But then UnitedHealth Group purchased QSSI in September 2012, raising eyebrows about conflicts of interest. Auerbach attributes the ultimate technical failure to QSSI: > [@](#): > > The fundamental fault is in the failure of coordination between the two systems, the failure to test from end to end, and—to use a term of art in software engineering—the failure to handle failure gracefully. To the extent that the data hub was the nexus for integrating many systems (including the [healthcare.gov](http://healthcare.gov) front end), “systems integrator” QSSI had the responsibility to work out graceful failure conditions with all of their partners and a comprehensible user experience in such cases—something that clearly wasn’t done. This points to bad management, lack of accountability, and a broken contractor procurement process. However, he’s exactly right about how the procurement process is really at fault: > [@](#): > > Development Seed President Eric Gundersen oversaw the part of [healthcare.gov](http://healthcare.gov) that did survive last week: the static front-end Web pages that had nothing to do with the hub. Development Seed was only able to do the work after being hired by contractor Aquilent, who navigated the bureaucracy of government procurement. “If I were to bid on the whole project,” Gundersen told me, “I would need more lawyers and more proposal writers than actual engineers to build the project. Why would I make a company like that?” These convolutions are exactly what prevented the brilliant techies of Obama’s re-election campaign from being involved with the development of [healthcare.gov](http://healthcare.gov). To get the opportunity to work on arguably the most pivotal website launch in American history, a smart young programmer would have to work for a company mired in bureaucracy and procurement regulations, with a website that looks like it’s from 10 years ago. So much for the efficiency of privatization. I’ve worked in SW development and management for close to 25 years, and I can verify that this is exactly the problem with government contractors; they’re often far better at navigating the process (or using connections to grease their way in) than actually getting the work done. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2013, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamacare-tech-surge/671838/247 "2013-11-15T18:10:21Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > And doesn’t that conflict mightily with the claim that the web site will be fixed by Nov. 30? If that was truly the case, we’d know the cost with a fair amount of precision. That they can’t even guess at how much the fixes will cost means Nov. 30 is a charade and they’ve been caught in yet another of the many lies this administration has spewed out over this law. My goodness, **Sam** , that makes Obama just as bad as Bush, right? Because lying about the implementation of a health care law is the same as lying to start a war that cost a trillion dollars and killed a hundred thousand Iraqis, right? ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2013, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamacare-tech-surge/671838/248 "2013-11-15T18:17:40Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > And if this was the leadership team at a private company and Obama was the CEO, you’d be leading the charge to have him fired, fined, or thrown in jail. Amazing how you have to \*invent \*scenarios in which the people gently but firmly trying to correct you on the facts here can be accused of hypocrisy in so doing. But, alas, we’re tragically doomed to inhabit the reality-based community instead. Do let us know when your intense anger at something and someone that affects you not one bit has run out. Perhaps you can then move on to suggesting how to fix the problems you know so much about. If, that is, you \*do \*want to see them fixed instead of keeping them around as fuel for Obama-bashing. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2013, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamacare-tech-surge/671838/249 "2013-11-15T18:22:27Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > [This just in:](http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/06/healthcare-obama-entrepreneurs-twitter/) > > “We were working 24/7, working in very, very rapid cycles, with very, very short deadlines and milestones. We were working in a very, very nimble hyper consumer focused way, all fused in this kind of maelstrom of pizza, Mountain Dew, and all nighters, and you know, idealism.” > > - Tood Park, Chief Technology Officer at HHS. > > Sounds like a great way to run the country. Sounds like every software development cycle since the invention of the transistor. Except the bit about idealism. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2013, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamacare-tech-surge/671838/250 "2013-11-15T18:43:59Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Sounds like every software development cycle since the invention of the transistor. > > Except the bit about idealism. I love the buzzword bingo BS of that quote. The bottom line is that if you are good, you get shit done cleanly and it works, methodology could be just about anything, buzzwords aren’t accomplishments. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2013, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamacare-tech-surge/671838/251 "2013-11-15T21:29:41Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Amazing how you have to \*invent \*scenarios in which the people gently but firmly trying to correct you on the facts here can be accused of hypocrisy in so doing. But, alas, we’re tragically doomed to inhabit the reality-based community instead. > > Do let us know when your intense anger at something and someone that affects you not one bit has run out. Perhaps you can then move on to suggesting how to fix the problems you know so much about. If, that is, you \*do \*want to see them fixed instead of keeping them around as fuel for Obama-bashing. Given that your post is pretty much pure ad-hominem, I’ll take it to mean that you don’t really have a substantive response. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2013, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamacare-tech-surge/671838/252 "2013-11-15T21:34:54Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > My goodness, **Sam** , that makes Obama just as bad as Bush, right? Because lying about the implementation of a health care law is the same as lying to start a war that cost a trillion dollars and killed a hundred thousand Iraqis, right? Really? Going back to the Bush well, are we? You do know that that we’re into Obama’s second administration, right? I swear, you should be thanking your lucky stars that George W. Bush came along, because he’s become your all-purpose soother and warm blankie. No matter how much Democrats in office screw the pooch, you can always say, “But… BUSH!” And then you can continue to pretend that you’re smarter and better and your opposition is ignorant and evil. Bush is your emotional trump card, and so it will ever be. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2013, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamacare-tech-surge/671838/253 "2013-11-18T15:49:19Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Given that your post is pretty much pure ad-hominem No, friend, I was merely observing that your posts have been pretty much that. You’ve engaged in nothing more than simple Dem-bashing here, and in denouncing what you imagine would be the hypocrisy of those pointing it out to you if reality was different from what it is. 😃 Yet the _ad hominem_ problem here is not yours? Not even your subsequent post to **Fear Itself** , who was merely reminding you of your well-established record of down-the-line partisan posting over the years? > [@](#): > > I’ll take it to mean that you don’t really have a substantive response. When come back, \*bring \*substance. :rolleyes: You can find it right next to Saddam’s WMD’s. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2013, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamacare-tech-surge/671838/254 "2013-11-18T16:54:52Z")
Dude, I have been posting long messages in this thead, with cites, detailing how the rollout of the web site has gone wrong and will continue to go wrong. Furthermore, I’ve been right on every prediction I’ve made. You’ve responded with little else but snark and cheap shots, despite being an engineer who should be able to engage in the actual substance of this debate. I didn’t even make this a partisan issue - in this case I was actually more interested in how the management of the project got so royally screwed up. Most of what I’ve been talking about is straightforward engineering best practices and management. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2013, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamacare-tech-surge/671838/255 "2013-11-18T17:26:14Z")
Forget it, **Sam**. When you raise issues of a flawed rollout of a software system and your opponents need to talk about Bush or how you’ve voted in the past as if those factors have any relevance, no further progress can be made with those individuals. Best to scroll past obvious attempts at distraction like complaints of you not simultaneously offering a solution. The detailed ‘inside baseball’ updates of how things went and are going are informative. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2013, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamacare-tech-surge/671838/256 "2013-11-18T17:32:21Z")
I believe that according to the Fair Trade and Fisheries Treaty of 1934, Canadians are expressly forbidden from adopting American jargon such as “dude”. Mike Myers may have confused you on this point, but he is regarded under that agreement as a “foreign born American”, like Ted Cruz. Non-compliance may impact Canada’s privilege of exporting hysterically maudlin female singers. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2013, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamacare-tech-surge/671838/257 "2013-11-18T17:53:16Z")
Okay, we’ll keep our maudlin singers out of America, if you promise to keep what you laughingly call ‘beer’ out of Canada. In particular, Coors Light and Bud Light trucks will be subject to attack by hordes of hockey-stick wielding fanatics should they cross the border. One more caveat: We absolutely refuse to take back Justin Bieber. You made him popular - you live with him. Besides, now that he’s gone all ‘gangsta’, he’s become officially American. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2013, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamacare-tech-surge/671838/258 "2013-11-18T17:53:32Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > Forget it, **Sam**. When you raise issues Is \*that \*what you call partisan bashing? > [@](#): > > The detailed ‘inside baseball’ updates of how things went and are going are informative. Where has he brought up any of those? It’s all denouncing Obama for not being a web development expert, while ignoring as much as possible the fuckups of the actual alleged web development experts who were hired for the job. Compare and contrast to his behavior during the last Republican administration, for some calibration on how much credibility to give any of his claim to superior knowledge. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2013, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamacare-tech-surge/671838/259 "2013-11-18T19:13:26Z")
Gentlemen- This thread has descended into “He said!” “Well, HE said!” The interjections of personalities into debate isn’t helping to reveal, determine or even define truth, here. It should stop. Address the issue at hand and not each other’s styles. Or - to sum up - knock it off. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2013, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamacare-tech-surge/671838/260 "2013-11-19T21:27:20Z")
Chao just testified that 30% to 40% still hasn’t been built. They need to build the payments and accounting systems before Jan 1. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamacare-tech-surge/671838.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obamacare-tech-surge/671838.md?page=14)