detailed account of what went wrong with Healthcare web site.

[dixiegrrrrl]

I gotta admit I am rather stunned at some of the obvious errors in communication, testing of the site.

The urgent race to fix the website — now playing out behind the locked glass doors of the closely guarded war room in Columbia, Md. — has exposed a deeply dysfunctional relationship between the Department of Health and Human Services and its technology contractors, and tensions between the White House chief of staff and senior health department officials.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/01/us/politics/inside-the-race-to-rescue-a-health-site-and-obama.html?src=me&ref=general




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[font style=color:#FF0000;]there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there?[/font]

[RKP5637]

1. Thanks for posting this! Part of my background is in large databases and I've

been amazed at the lack of testing, apparently, and so many were in denial as to the eventuality of what would happen. It was like going on stage for a gala event and falling off the stage in the opening act with zillions in the audience, and those wanting hints of failure so as to promote demise.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. Another part of the problem seems to be

too many cooks in the kitchen, who weren't speaking to each other.
The website was built by several companies who did several parts of it
and who were answerable to different agencies within the government.

And no one test drove the finished product.

[RKP5637]

6. Yep, I've seen this so many times in my career, people do have good intentions, but

as you say, too many cooks in the kitchen ... and then professional pride creeps in, one not wanting to allow others to make 'head of the pack' decisions. That, is where really strong program management is required, that cuts across all of the various organizations to enable unified organizational and decision making processes.

Without that, one ends up with bad software talking to bad software, which was the case here. And that, is a horrific mess to unscramble ... the propagation of errors spawns new errors and instabilities ... eventually gridlock and crashes, and unsustainable compute overhead. ... and hence this mess.

[cantbeserious]

2. Database Backed Websites Are Not Trivial - Integrating Legacy Databases Make Things Much Harder

eom

[SharonAnn]

4. Major computer systems, complex and interrelated, are difficult to implement.

I had a really dumb boss say once, "It's just a few lines of computer code. How tough can it be?"

I didn't even bother to answer with anything more than "It's tougher than you think."

With some people, the dumb is really strong.

I'm sure they'll fix and improve the site. It's a shame that it had such a rocky start.

[cilla4progress]

5. Pres Obama has the personal fault

of being too trusting, I think. Maybe he's learning...learned.