Healthcare.gov
I'm really getting tired of hearing pundits debate whether (HHS Secretary) Sebelius should lose her job over the Obamacare website rollout. Take a giant step back, take a deep breath, and admit to yourselves the following things:
Admit it - This time, last month, you had no idea who Kathleen Sebelius was.
Admit it - There is nothing shocking about a bad rollout. Major software and website rollouts have been failing for decades, especially on large projects. Every other operating system from Microsoft has sucked. Every other security update from Facebook has been horrible. Google Maps was a joke when it hit the streets. (you see what I did there, right?) Those are the giants of the tech world, and they have crashed & burned repeatedly on rollout day. If those guys were in charge of healthcare.gov, they probably would have had the same results. Because Healthcare.gov was a harder project. It had the added constraints placed on government-developed software, it had to be not just secure, but 'holy crap' secure, and it had to network together several other iffy government sites which didn't provide a strong base.
Admit it - The world didn't end after any of those private sector failed roll-outs. Once the software went public, the problems missed in testing stood out like an overhyped Miley Cyrus video, and could be (kinda) quickly addressed. And while the software never became great, it at least became usable.
Admit it - We wouldn't be making this big a deal out of the failed healthcare.gov website rollout if Obamacare wasn't such a nuclear political football. Any other government website having technical difficulties on day 1 would get about zero newstime in the media.
And finally, admit it - The initial quality of the website has nothing to do with the soundness of the Affordable Care Act. And I say that as someone who thinks that Obamacare is a lousy patch on a mediocre system. I am not a fan of the Affordable Care Act. But this is a technical issue, and it's resolvable. It is not a policy issue.
Admit it - This time, last month, you had no idea who Kathleen Sebelius was.
Admit it - There is nothing shocking about a bad rollout. Major software and website rollouts have been failing for decades, especially on large projects. Every other operating system from Microsoft has sucked. Every other security update from Facebook has been horrible. Google Maps was a joke when it hit the streets. (you see what I did there, right?) Those are the giants of the tech world, and they have crashed & burned repeatedly on rollout day. If those guys were in charge of healthcare.gov, they probably would have had the same results. Because Healthcare.gov was a harder project. It had the added constraints placed on government-developed software, it had to be not just secure, but 'holy crap' secure, and it had to network together several other iffy government sites which didn't provide a strong base.
Admit it - The world didn't end after any of those private sector failed roll-outs. Once the software went public, the problems missed in testing stood out like an overhyped Miley Cyrus video, and could be (kinda) quickly addressed. And while the software never became great, it at least became usable.
Admit it - We wouldn't be making this big a deal out of the failed healthcare.gov website rollout if Obamacare wasn't such a nuclear political football. Any other government website having technical difficulties on day 1 would get about zero newstime in the media.
And finally, admit it - The initial quality of the website has nothing to do with the soundness of the Affordable Care Act. And I say that as someone who thinks that Obamacare is a lousy patch on a mediocre system. I am not a fan of the Affordable Care Act. But this is a technical issue, and it's resolvable. It is not a policy issue.