The Obamacare Website Didn't Have to Fail. How to Do Better Next Time

"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.