Healthcare.gov Sucks Because They Hired Political Cronies Instead Of Real Experts To Build It

[Purveyor]

By Techdirt
Friday, October 11, 2013 9:31 EDT

There's been plenty of talk lately about just how screwed up the launch of Healthcare.gov has been. While any massively large-scale internet launch is likely to suffer some problems, the level of disaster on this particular project has been quite impressive. This has led some to wonder why this happened, especially given the reputation of President Obama's "web-savvy" campaign team. The answers aren't too hard to figure out, of course. First off, the campaign team is quite different from the team implementing this -- which was handled by the Department of Health and Human Services. But, more importantly: it appears that the federal government basically handed this project over to the same crew of giant government contractors, who have a long history of screwed up giant IT projects, and almost no sense of the "internet native" world.

The Sunlight Foundation (link above) figured out the list of contractors who worked on the site, and noted that the big ones not only are well-known DC power-player insiders, but they're also big on the lobbying and political contributions side of things. You've got companies like... Booz Allen Hamilton, famous for promoting cyberwar hype and employing Ed Snowden. There's defense contracting giant Northrup Grumman. Then there's SAIC -- which I can't believe can still get government business. This is the same firm that famously was given a $380 million contract to revamp the FBI system, on which it went $220 million over budget, and then saw the entire system scrapped after it (literally) brought some users to tears, and the FBI realized it was useless in fighting terrorism. SAIC is also the company that NYC Mayor Bloomberg demanded return $600 million after a city computer project (budgeted at $68 million) actually cost $740 million. SAIC has a long list of similar spectacular failures on government IT projects.

As you look down the list put together by the Sunlight Foundation, it's all companies like this: giant monstrosities which are simply tied in closely with the government. All the large consulting firms are listed: Accenture, Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, McKinsey. What's missing? Basically any company with even the slightest smidgen of experience building and maintaining large-scale, public-facing web-based apps. The list has no "internet native" companies.

Many, many years ago, I worked for an e-commerce startup here in Silicon Valley, and I ended up (sort of by default) in charge of trying to open up the government market for what we were doing. It involved meeting with a slew of all-too-slick, ex-politician, ex-military "consultants" with no technical knowledge whatsoever, who, for $15k to $25k/month retainers plus a (large) cut of any deal, would drink hard liquor and promise to "connect" us with big companies with government connections, and then help us sneak past the government bidding process to get no-bid contracts. It was an eye-opening experience that highlighted for me that getting government contracts in the tech world was very much about who you knew, rather than any actual knowledge, skills or experience. While this was quite a long time ago, it would appear that little has changed.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/11/healthcare-gov-sucks-because-they-hired-political-cronies-instead-of-real-experts-to-build-it/

[oldhippie]

1. I have to concur .....

... at least about SAIC. In my former career I was a Dept of the Army technical contracting official. I had to watch over several contracts where SAIC totally botched the job, run up huge overruns, got paid for them, and then we scrapped the botched systems before they were ever used. And I couldn't do a thing about it as they really know how to operate the levers in Wash, D.C. and the mid and high levels of the DoD.

[LiberalArkie]

2. I tend to believe that it was someone who was the low bidder with cost plus

[Shivering Jemmy]

3. Doesn't suck as bad right now

Did they hire redevelopers?

[msongs]

4. "government" corruption to benefit for-profit private contractors - another privatization scam nt

[annabanana]

5. Should've had OFA do it .. .n/t

[truedelphi]

7. Exactly! n/t

[Zorra]

6. Yes. Thank you, Purveyor. nt

[truedelphi]

8. K & R. n/t

[ieoeja]

9. Have you ever tried creating an account with Social Security?

That has been up for years. It requires the same Experian "verification". And I was unable to get in because I couldn't remember half the shit they kept asking me as much of it happened decades ago.


My first IT job was with the Veterans Administration. I worked on a loan collection program. The last two steps in collections were:

1. refer to Collection Reporting Agency
2. garnish tax refunds.

Of course, any money collected after the CRA referral had to be split 50-50 with the CRA. So even though the CRA would play on factor in garnishing their tax refunds, they would get 50% anyway.

I'm glad to say the CRA referral instructions were so convoluted I was unable get it to work.

Admittedly, I recognized it for what it was: a taxpayer rip off. So I might not have really tried all that hard to get it to work.

What I see happening at Social Security and with the ACA is the same fucking shit. If it wasn't written into the ACA originally, then I'm sure it a law was passed requiring the ACA to do this.

[cbayer]

10. We really need to send elad.

[Rex]

12. I second that.

We need to send them a Ringer.

[Rex]

11. Lemme guess, they hired Booz Allen Hamilton to build the dam thing?

nt.

[FarCenter]

13. Good enough for government work? The contractors building Obamacare

http://reporting.sunlightfoundation.com/2013/aca-contractors/

Serco - 114,307,266.00
CGI Federal - 93,700,000.00
Quality Software Services Inc (United Health Group) - 68,339,812.00
Maximus Federal Services Inc. - 43,163,074.00
Vangent (General Dynamics) - 28,237,831.00
McKinsey & Company - 13,767,707.00
Deloitte Consulting - 12,921,093.80
Porter Novelli Public Strategies - 11,670,603.00
Computing Solutions - 7,802,076.24
David-James LLC - 7,283,208.00
Information Systems Consulting Group Inc. - 6,270,789.18
Unicom Logistics - 6,270,789.00
Sentel Corp - 5,487,434.00
International Business Machines - 4,999,999.00
Computer Sciences Corp. - 4,024,384.42

A lovely collection of Beltway Bandits. Total contract expense comes to $459,246,292.76.

Half a billion bucks for this turkey.

[dairydog91]

14. Imagine that this was Apple iHealth, and the head of development was trying to explain this...

...to Steve Jobs.

[FarCenter]

16. Steve would be bursting out of his turtleneck

However, it is unlikely that the project would have gotten to this point without multiple serious reviews.

Steve would have done several reviews and various people would have caught holy hell long before now.

[B2G]

15. I would imagine they're at about Stage 3 right now

Five Stages of a Project:

1. Wild Enthusiasm
2. Hopeless Despair
3. Search for the Guilty
4. Blame of the Innocent
5. Praise and Honors for Non-Participants