
Obama administration to end contract with company behind HealthCare.gov - robdoherty2
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-administration-to-end-contract-with-cgi-federal-company-behind-healthcaregov/2014/01/10/001eb05a-719e-11e3-8b3f-b1666705ca3b_story.html
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crbnw00ts
What's sad is that it wasn't so long ago we were treated to breathless
articles regarding the software that was used as part of the President's re-
election campaign, which apparently was well-tested and well-engineered enough
to actually do its job when the time came:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-t...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-
the-nerds-go-marching-in/265325/)

It seems today's politicians are (at least in some cases) familiar with what
it takes to build reliable software. Perhaps the problem is that they are only
willing to see that it's done when it benefits them directly, but not when
their constituents need it.

~~~
Pxtl
The requirements for working with the USGov are restrictive enough that only
specific companies are capable of participating in the bidding process. The
Democratic party itself and Obama's re-election are, by contrast, private
organizations that are not limited by these rules.

Basically, it seems like the government sourcing process has shrunk the pool
of potential bidders too small to provide a properly competitive marketplace
for software for USGov customers.

~~~
dclowd9901
> Basically, it seems like the government sourcing process has shrunk the pool
> of potential bidders too small to provide a properly competitive marketplace
> for software for USGov customers.

And don't think for a second that this is unintentional.

~~~
elicash
The INTENT is to limit corruption. If they could give contracts to anybody
they want, then they could reward donors.

I think it's actually achieved that goal. It comes at the expense of
competence, however, as those with the best lawyers (not best developers) win
contracts.

~~~
shawkinaw
So we have a choice between corruption and incompetence ... I'm pretty sure
that corruption would actually be better, at least shit would work.

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thebulge
We only have a choice of which we want to start with. Eventually we end up
with both.

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coherentpony
No shit. This whole ordeal has been nothing short of a complete and utter
fucking disaster. And how much did the government pay to have this work done
[1]? This is procurement at its finest. The government could have easily paid
10% of what they did to a tech start-up who would have done a much better job
utilising scalable technologies.

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-
checker/wp/2013/10/...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-
checker/wp/2013/10/24/how-much-did-healthcare-gov-cost/)

~~~
Iftheshoefits
I rather think that depends on what technological expertise the the start-up
brought to bear on the problem.

I understand it's chic to think that Healtcare.gov is "just another website",
especially among a certain crowd who think that all development is web
development, and best done on a MacbookPro using RoR/node/<functional language
Y>/Go + <insert fad-of-the-day JS framework here>. It's a mistaken impression,
though, because we aren't talking about some from-scratch system. We're
talking about communication with and between a lot of legacy systems requiring
what is almost certainly a frankenstein-like nightmare of patchwork APIs that
dive into programming languages and styles hipster 20-somethings at hot S.F.
Start Up X wouldn't understand because it's beneath them (I'm exaggerating and
generalizing here for effect--this isn't to impugn all 20-somethings, start-
ups, etc.).

Honestly I don't think there is any contractor who could have pulled this
project off flawlessly, or even very much better than the group of misfits who
did Healthcare.gov did, just because of the sheer complexity of the project
compounded with the increased politically-motivated interference from
government officials that comes with such high-profile projects.

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MichaelApproved
> Honestly I don't think there is any contractor who could have pulled this
> project off flawlessly

A few flaws could be excused but the site was a disaster.

> or even very much better than the group of misfits who did Healthcare.gov

In just a couple of months, the current contractor group was able to clean up
most of the mess and improve the site dramatically. In just _two months_!
Imagine what they could have pulled off if the group was put together earlier.

~~~
Iftheshoefits
The were able to clean up and improve an existing system, yes. That doesn't
imply anything about their abilities to have created it from the ground up.

~~~
MichaelApproved
To me, it implies they have even more ability than if I saw them build it from
the ground up. They were able to read the garbage written by the other
developers and make something useful out of it. Pretty impressive!

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hga
Too many lies in this article to take more from this than the bare fact that
CGI Federal will be replaced by Accenture (the latter of which is no prize
from what I've heard).

I.e. the government's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) were
notoriously the "prime contractor" until the 3rd week of October (when
replaced by contractor QSSI, also responsible for the "data hub"), and the
attacks on the contractors are misplaced when their management was so
impossibly bad.

The linked _Washington Post_ article is not great, but better:
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-
administration-...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-
administration-to-end-contract-with-cgi-federal-company-behind-
healthcaregov/2014/01/10/001eb05a-719e-11e3-8b3f-b1666705ca3b_story.html)

~~~
coldcode
Accenture taking over is like replacing dumb & dumber with larry, moe and
curly.

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greg5green
>>Accenture, which is one of the world’s largest consulting firms, has
extensive experience with computer systems on the state level, and it built
California’s new health insurance exchange.

Hasn't California's exchange had big problems too?

~~~
angersock
Accenture is Arthur Andersen, and they've got a long history of extracting
maximum value for shareholders from government contracts (state and local).

EDIT:

Arthur Andersen spawned Andersen Consulting spawned Arthur Anderson Business
Consulting spawned Accenture. Some of AABC splintered off and joined Hitachi
Consulting, some went elsewhere.

The history of computer consulting is varied, interesting, and tragic.

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patrickg_zill
Am I the only one who thinks that the failures were intentional - that the
whole mix-up is a passive-aggressive way of herding the USA into eventual
single-payer?

If Washington DC is, in fact, really that stupid and it is not intentional,
under what strange notion of justice am I to pay taxes to these morons?

~~~
smsm42
Depends on what you mean by intentional. I'm not sure if the guys that call
the shots are Machiavellian enough for such things - given how incompetent
they are in everything else, hard to imagine they would be super-competent in
long-reaching plots. If they had been able to execute long-running plans of
such magnitude with such certainty, they wouldn't screw up so many things so
badly as they had.

However, the resulting vector of their efforts and failures may very well
point into that direction, and not without their cooperation and help, since
once they beat insurance industry into full dependency and make the population
rely on subsidized care, the next logical step would be to eliminate the
middlemen - there would be no point for them to exist anymore, at least not as
independent entities - given that they would have no independence as such and
serve no useful function in such setup.

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bane
One of the differences between creating and enforcing laws and creating
software is that software _actually_ has to work. The efficacy of a law is
open to endless debate, and it doesn't actually have to end up with any
intended effect. But software, you can't legislate software.

It's obvious that government shouldn't be in the software business, and the
government would agree "that's why we use contractors for this!". But when
100% of your revenue comes from the government, in a way you're basically the
same thing.

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protomyth
The government isn't exactly doing too well with any of its software projects.
The IRS had problems during tax season and the FBI has cancelled and restarted
multiple times. The Dept of Interior has been held in contempt of court for
how bad their systems have been.

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dreamfactory2
Talk about going from the frying pan to the fire.

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wehadfun
I here the points about about legacy systems. How much would it have cost to
scrap those old systems and build from the ground up.

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sciguy77
Is anyone surprised by this?

~~~
larockt
Slightly surprised, but only because I would have thought that the company had
kept up their payments to the necessary campaign funds.

