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Look up the cost of the healthcare.gov website project*

People complain about government contractor costs for a reason

*Last I checked it was north of a billion in 2014 dollars

Great example. It was the genesis of the US Digital Service and 18F. Complaints are valid, but so should be recognition that the government took rapid action to course correct. Promises made, promises kept.

https://www.usds.gov/report-to-congress/2016/healthcare-dot-... (US Digital Service: Stabilizing and Improving HealthCare.gov)

https://archive.is/Boysy (Washington Post: White House launches ‘U.S. Digital Service,’ with HealthCare.gov fixer at the helm)

https://www.usds.gov/report-to-congress/2016/projects/

https://www.itdashboard.gov/reports

And a project close to my heart as an identity/auth wonk: https://login.gov

Healthcare.gov on the backend had to interface with systems from a bunch of different government agencies and companies. Many of those systems had not been designed to interface to other agency and company systems. They all had their own APIs and data formats.

That all greatly increased the complexity of the project.

An IRS e-filing system would just be adding a public interface for taxpayers to a system they already have.

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