Econintersect: Nearly two weeks ago GEI News recounted what happened when a staff member tried to use the federal healthcare insurance exchange (HIX), HealthCare.gov. The website didn’t work. From all reports things have not improved in the intervening time. An investigative report at The Daily Beast is the best summary Econintersect as seen thus far of just what went wrong. How could the same administration that ran two election campaigns with a state-of-the-art website fall so far short on HealthCare.gov?
Andrew Romano has found that the reason for the diametrically opposed results between campaign IT operations and HHS (Department of Health and Human Services) performance has some fundamental factors. Romano’s article at The Daily Beast explains the differences in detail. Here is the Econintersect list of the factors:
- The government does not have the IT technical skills to complete such a project.
- Government hiring and firing rules are very restrictive so upgrading personnel is difficult.
- HealthCare.gov has a much more complicated function than monster commercial sites such as Amazon.com
- Far too little time was allotted to build the system.
- The launch of such complicated systems are doomed to fail unless they are brought up in stages, not as a fully implemented system for 100 million users on day one.
- Government procurement controls are far more cumbersome and complex than in the private sector.
The interrelationships of the above factors (and others not listed) are skillfully woven into a insightful report by Romano.
A previous article by Nick Gillespie from The Daily Beast gives further background on the HHS failure to roll out Obamacare properly.
Sources:
- HIX: Data is Hard to Find (GEI News, 09 October 2013)
- Why HealthCare.gov, the Obamacare Website, Doesn’t Work (Andrew Romano, The Daily Beast, 18 October 2013)
- The Abysmal, Pathetic Obamacare Rollout (Nick Gillespie, The Daily Beast, 17 October 2013)