How To FIx Healthcare.gov: Go Open-Source! 307
McGruber writes "Over at Bloomberg Businessweek, Paul Ford explains that the debacle known as healthcare.gov makes clear that it is time for the government to change the way it ships code: namely, by embracing the open source approach to software development that has revolutionized the technology industry." That seems like the only way to return maximum value to the taxpayers, too.
Healthcare.gov is not Facebook (Score:5, Interesting)
Am I the only one that thinks things have gotten a bit hyperbolic. I hear a lot of non technical people talking about how "bad" the architecture is.
This is a new product and has more users a few weeks in then most of the big boys had in over a year.
We are not selling a iPhone or a plane ticket here. This is a complex infrastructure with lots of back end interactions. The front end is fairly modern. They haven't gotten around to minimizing and consolidating the JS files, but that will come I'm sure.
I've gotten through the sign up process, they added some stuff to do some ad-hoc shopping. I've seen much more dragging of feet by supposed enterprise players. What are we 20 days into this enormous platform? Most of the people complaining don't even need the damn thing because they already have insurance.
At the end of the day the exchanges are not even selling insurance. Insurance companies are doing that. It's like using googles shopping feature. Ultimately the insurance company is Amazon.com. If you need the insurance you'll go directly to the person selling it. Hell we probably should have started with the exchanges being nothing more than a fancy craigslist.
People who need insurance because they are sick or scared will get it. They will get the subsidies etc. The vast majority of these so called "healthy young" are just declining insurance through there employers. They just have to fill out a bunch of paper work with their HR department.
At the end of the day healthcare.gov is something to help people get insurance. The subsides and the new rules are what will get it for them.
This misses the point (Score:2, Interesting)
Not only did they not want to go open source they offered the contract to ONE company. There was no open bid.
It gets worse. They also didn't want the programmers available for congressional subpoena. The whole thing was done as secretively and opaquely as possible.
This isn't a failure of system design. Its idiots destroying thing by trying to do everything in the most sneaky and underhanded manner possible.
Answer this... if we knew everything about Obamacare at the time of voting that we know now... would it have passed?
No.
Which is why they don't tell us anything. They don't respect your vote. You don't get to decide. Your opinion is worthless. They will do what they want to do. And if you want something else they will lie to your face.
Was the IRS attacking political opponents of the president on purpose? Of course not. Until it was proven that they were.
Was the NSA tracking Americans domestically intentionally? Of course not. Until it was proven that they were.
Was the ATF selling guns to the drug cartels and then not arresting anyone? Of course not. Until it was proven that they were.
They don't care what is right or wrong or what you want or deserve. All irrelevant.
They have the power and you do what they say or else. The government has gotten completely out of control and it won't get better until pretty much everyone in power is removed.
Re: ...the ONLY bidder (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, it was the lowest, but there apparently weren't any other bidders, or at least none that anyone can find or name.
You see, they didn't actually put it out to open bidding, and instead awarded the contract to someone with political connections.
They used something called "task orders," which allows bureaucrats to completely bypass open bids. Basically, if you win one government contract somewhere along the way (even for a completely different project), it's possible for the government to award you future contracts on other projects without worrying about all of that pesky "low bidder" stuff.
Re:It failed because they went with the lowest bid (Score:3, Interesting)
it failed because it was designed by the lowest bidder
Wrong.
It failed because it was a crony capitalism project, gifted by the Obama administration to a former campaign worker.
http://tealmedia.com/ ... Teal Media was selected as the lead visual design team on the redesign of HealthCare.gov. Check out The Atlantic article about the redesign.
http://tealmedia.com/index.html#about ... Jessica Teal - Principle ... Jessica founded Teal Media following her successful stint as Design Manager for the 2008 Obama presidential campaign.
Re:It failed because they went with the lowest bid (Score:5, Interesting)
It failed because they went with the lowest bidder
It didn't fail because they went with the lowest bidder. This was apparently a "sole source" contract. They just added another task onto an existing contract.
Meet CGI Federal, the company behind the botched launch of HealthCare.gov [washingtonpost.com]
CGI's business model depends on embedding itself deeply within an institution.
"The ultimate aim is to establish relations so intimate with the client that decoupling becomes almost impossible," read one profile of the company. ...
CGI Federal's winning bid stretches back to 2007, when it was one of 16 companies to get certified on a $4 billion "indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity" contract for upgrading Medicare and Medicaid's systems. Government-Wide Acquisition Contracts — GWACs, as they're affectionately known — allow agencies to issue task orders to pre-vetted companies without going through the full procurement process, but also tend to lock out companies that didn't get on the bandwagon originally. According to USASpending.gov, CGI Federal got a total of $678 million for various services under the contract — including the $93.7 million Healthcare.gov job, which CGI Federal won over three other companies in late 2011.
It's also true that CGI Federal began lobbying as it started winning government work. According to OpenSecrets.org, it has spent $800,000 since 2006 lobbying on several different tax and appropriations bills.
Feds reviewed only one bid for Obamacare website design [washingtonexaminer.com]
Rather than open the contracting process to a competitive public solicitation with multiple bidders, officials in the Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid accepted a sole bidder, CGI Federal, the U.S. subsidiary of a Canadian company with an uneven record of IT pricing and contract performance.
CMS officials are tight-lipped about why CGI was chosen or how it happened. They also refuse to say if other firms competed with CGI, or if there was ever a public solicitation for building Healthcare.gov, the backbone of Obamacare’s problem-plagued web portal....
There is no evidence CMS issued any public solicitation for the Obamacare website contract. The Examiner asked both CMS and CGI for copies of any public solicitation notice for the Healthcare.gov task orders. Neither CMS nor CGI furnished any such public notice.....
The ID/IQ system provides a fast-track contract approval process, but it is much less likely than competitive bidding to secure high quality at a reasonable cost.
“Whenever you have limited competition, but certainly with a sole source or a one-bid offer, the government has to question whether it is going to get the best product at the best price,” said Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog organization that monitors federal contracting.
Both USAspending.gov, which tracks federal spending, and the FFATA Subaward Reporting System, which specifically tracks contracts, refer to CGI as the lone bidder for the Obamacare website design award.
Each site describes the CGI contract award as the product of “full and open competition,” but CGI is the only bidder listed.
I can't find the link at the moment, but apparently this company is "favored" within the administration.... for some reason.
Re:routine IT work (Score:4, Interesting)
And then you add integration with all of the 3rd party legacy systems on the back end..., That level of scalability testing is possible, but unlikely. It demands a test system that perfectly mirrors the production system. And I mean perfectly, down to the wiring, switches and routers. Then you have to model your user behaviour accurately, which is difficult for a system that doesn't have any real users yet.
If you can't build such a test system, or your tests don't reflect the typical actions of your users, something could slip through the cracks. If your tests with 100,000 users on one server, that doesn't mean that production will work with 5 million users on 50 servers.
Re:It failed because they went with the lowest bid (Score:5, Interesting)
They didn't even get to start coding until this spring,
Wow, if that is true, I'm actually impressed that they got it working as well as they did by October. That's a lot of work to get done quickly.
Re:Rearrange the deck chairs. (Score:4, Interesting)
The real question is why isn't it open source right now. As a taxpayer, I paid for (a part of) this thing. I want to be see the source code for my health care exchange software.
Maybe we can FOIA it?