

Builders of Obama's health website saw red flags - daegloe
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/10/22/v-fullstory/3703850/builders-of-obamas-health-website.html

======
whalesalad
If this guy is such a rockstar at cleaning up the mess other people leave
behind, why is he not leading these projects from the beginning? Or, since he
is only one person, training and mentoring a staff of people who can manage
the various projects in a similar fashion?

I feel like this is unfortunately just a typical response to a big issue like
this ... "oh shit we've got a crisis, let's give everyone a hero." I think we
can all agree that it'd be nice to have a full team of heroes leading all of
the projects mentioned, instead of calling one in after millions of dollars
have been spent on a failed system. _Measure twice, cut once._

Actually let's take it one step further, fuck all of these bloated and
inefficient contracting organizations and the layer-cake of bureaucracy that
has been established to glue them together with government projects.

We have a strong national military... what's to stop us from having a strong
national development team? I'm 100%-for private industry and letting private
companies bid and fight to build the best product for the job ... but time and
time again the end product we're left with is total garbage. Maybe the
contractors are managed poorly, maybe the people writing the proposals have
not a fucking clue in the world of what they are asking for, maybe the
developers are careless and put out shitty work. Either way, a TON of time and
money is wasted. It's an embarrassment.

We need an elite squad of hackers and designers building out the services for
our nation. One that's both carefully chosen as well as fully responsible and
100% transparent for the things that they create.

Hell, it creates STEM jobs.

~~~
VladRussian2
>We have a strong national military... what's to stop us from having a strong
national development team?

not having another $600-700B/year to spend?

~~~
viraptor
Considering one would improve local healthcare and the other one is designed
to destroy the health in remote places... the priorities on the existing
$600-700B/year could be adjusted. Unless the global health of the world is
treated as a zero-sum game...

------
zepom
Even tough it's very easy to guess what's been going on for anyone who's ever
been working on large dev projects, I can't wait for the full story behind
this mess to appear on the daily WTF website.

------
ck2
But everyone decided they just wanted a paycheck anyway.

------
DanielBMarkham
I think I was attacked by a gang of angry buzzwords about halfway through this
article.

I found it most enjoyable. Rarely do we see so much political spin and
software development so close together in the news. Somebody should write a
book about this.

~~~
AndrewO
I especially liked the frantic-nerds-with-energy-drinks picture that this
article painted in my mind. Top-notch reporting, Miami Herald.

