

Why HealthCare.gov, the Obamacare Website, Doesn’t Work - lesserj
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/18/why-healthcare-gov-the-obamacare-website-doesn-t-work.html

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grej
"because they’re not allowed to mess up we’ve created a system where it’s also
very hard for them to do things that are new and innovative. The rules all
favor incumbents."

So true. From this article:[http://www.infoworld.com/t/e-government/how-
federal-cronies-...](http://www.infoworld.com/t/e-government/how-federal-
cronies-built-and-botched-healthcaregov-228724)
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"All but one of of the 47 contractors who won contracts to carry out work on
the Affordable Care Act worked for the government prior to its passage," the
report reads. Some of the names ought to be familiar: Northrop Grumman,
General Dynamics, Deloitte, and Booz Allen Hamilton, all of whom assumed
different roles and worked on different aspects of the project.

As familiar as those names might be, especially to those who follow Beltway
lobbying practices, few of them would be as commonly associated with large-
scale IT projects as, say, Google, Amazon.com, or Dell would be -- especially
when it came to building the public-facing components of the system. (Techdirt
concurs.)

Why did they get the work? The report hints at a likely reason: The companies
were big lobbyists, with "some 17 contract winners reported spending more than
$128 million on lobbying in 2011 and 2012." Granted, some experience with
government work is vital for any contractor, and the federal procurement
system is geared to favor those already doing government work, but Sunlight
pointed out that the list tips heavily toward those with both existing
contracts and political leverage." _______________________________

Unfortunately the US government procurement system is set up to reinforce
cronyism. There are a lot of mechanisms in place to try to prevent it, but the
way proposals are structured, it's very tough on new entrants. The factors of
a typical US Government IT proposal are Past performance, Key personnel,
Technical, Management, and Price. Sometimes these factors are blended or
worded differently but in nearly all cases, the technical approach can become
a small portion of the overall decision. This favors incumbants with some
track record (and perhaps some ex-government employees that are still buddies
with some of the key players) over ones with no government experience, even if
it's not great like CGI Federal.

Adding more issues, procurement officials are under a ton of time pressure and
often don't have the skills to understand that the relevant most past
performance qualification in the development of a health exchange is not
simply having worked on previous contracts in the government health space.

