

The Obamacare Website Didn't Have to Fail. How to Do Better Next Time - bernardom
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-16/open-source-everything-the-moral-of-the-healthcare-dot-gov-debacle 

======
hga
Amazing bullshit. E.g.:

" _The dining room is the front end, with all the buttons to click and forms
to fill out. The kitchen is the back end, with all the databases and services.
The contractor most responsible for the back end is CGI Federal._ "

Uh, no. Unless everything we've heard is completely wrong about them being
responsible for the front end, and e.g. Quality Software Services Inc. (QSSI),
a unit of United Health Group, being responsible for the backend identity
module (using a known to work, even if it's a pain, package from Oracle).

This article is mostly a plea to do things the open source and specifically
GitHub way. Except for mentioning the typical total opaqueness of what's
behind the front end to those of us not connected to the problem, it doesn't
address the major well known issues that made _certain_ this would be a
failure. I keep saying this, but here goes again:

HHS's CMS, i.e. government bureaucrats and perhaps political appointees, who
had no serious (or any???) experience, assumed the role of integrator,
including integration testing.

They and those above were late with specifications and requirements, kept
changing them (7 major ones in the last 10 months per the NYT), were making
changes in the week before launch, per the AP did integration testing and when
they did a simulation test of 200 simultaneous logins just before launch the
modules they were testing locked up. As did the site shortly after its
midnight launch. Oh, yeah, three days after the launch CMS panicked and
proposed to fire QSSI and punt their identity system, but eventually decided
that would take longer than QSSI getting it to work; who knows, but that's
another sign of CMS as the integrator failing hard while distracting both QSSI
and CGI Federal.

Contrary to what the author says near the end:

" _Doubtless the problems will get fixed. All bugs are shallow with the
president watching._ "

No, there's no guarantees enough of the problems will get fixed with the
current setup and processes (or lack thereof) in the time politics will allow
before the nation times out on this mess (Jan 1 is a very hard deadline for
all those losing their soon to be illegal major medical plans, and as of now
these exchanges are the only way to get mitigating subsidizes for the gold-
plated minimum plan).

So far, "the president watching" has been reported to result in the White
House and CMS ... working on a plan forward, which will hopefully be finished
Thursday, 3 and a half weeks after the launch. I.e. we're not seeing decisive
action, not even an admission there's a really serious problem.

~~~
dragonwriter
Incidentally, the entity involved is "CMS", not CMMS.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Medicare_and_Medica...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Medicare_and_Medicaid_Services)
[http://www.cms.gov/](http://www.cms.gov/)

~~~
hga
Damn. That's what I thought, then saw people using CMMS and thought I'd
confirmed it (on Wikipedia, even), but you're right.

Thanks a lot!

Side note: CGI Federal is responsible for cms.gov and medicare.gov, the latter
of which I can attest to working well (Part D prescription plan signup and
claims stuff), even if it's a bit clunky.

