How To FIx Healthcare.gov: Go Open-Source!

McGruber writes "Over at Bloomberg Businessweek, Paul Ford explains that the debacle known as healthcare.gov makes clear that it is time for the government to change the way it ships code: namely, by embracing the open source approach to software development that has revolutionized the technology industry." That seems like the only way to return maximum value to the taxpayers, too.

Comments

How can BusinessInsider say that????

[sconeu]

Don't they know that Open Source is Inferior?

Re:How can BusinessInsider say that????

[kermidge]

Let's see, that's where Oracle says that blending open-source with commercial requires skill levels that aren't abundant so that can make problems (especially for the company who just happens by the way to be selling that commercial package) and that there is no incentive for open-source software to be secure or good because there's no economic incentive.

  'Government-sponsored community development approaches to software creation lack the financial incentives of commercial companies to produce low-defect, well-documented code.'

Conveniently avoided is the possibility of, you know, paying open-source developers.... and if it IS sponsored by government, does that not imply, or at least allow, for payments to developers? If yes, that rather blows away that objection as well.

Re:How can BusinessInsider say that????

[shentino]

Sadly the feds are probably more likely to listen to oracle.

Re:How can BusinessInsider say that????

[RabidReindeer]

Sadly the feds are probably more likely to listen to oracle.

Oracle wouldn't even exist if if wasn't for the Federal Government.

Of course the Feds will listen. Oracle has made an art form out of saying exactly what the Feds want to hear.

Rearrange the deck chairs.

[HornWumpus]

When your system doesn't work and you are way behind schedule.

Make a radical change and fire someone. That's sure to fix things.

Re:Rearrange the deck chairs.

[cold fjord]

And add staff, lots more staff. That will make it better, and get the job done faster. (Wasn't that one of the conclusions of The Mythical Man Month? (Archive.org download))

Re:Rearrange the deck chairs.

[Charliemopps]

Actually, I've been involved in projects where exactly that was required. That site isn't that complicated and there's nothing new and innovative on it. If they brought in the right people and busted ass for a few weeks they could have an open source alternative built and tested. The problem here is it's government and there's no way to just make the kind of executive decisions that would be required to pull it off.

Re:Rearrange the deck chairs.

[laxr5rs]

That is awesome. Let's just totally change course! That will fix everything.

Re:Rearrange the deck chairs.

[Bite The Pillow]

Which site isn't that complicated? The one that confirms eligibility based on data from multiple agencies which probably were not built to work together? The one that was supposed to magically work day 1 to support the kind of load that every other website grew to support organically?

There are too many things going on here to say it isn't that complicated. Nothing innovative, that's true, but the work to integrate a goodly number of systems still needs done, and it isn't that simple.

I have done post-merger integrations in the Fortune 100 space, and existing systems that only need to be tied together can be a convoluted mess. This is orders of magnitude more complicated, It isn't going to be a simple web service or database call to get some info, call another one, and display something on the page. It should be, but there's no way it "just works" like that.

Re:Rearrange the deck chairs.

[rtb61]

The problem here is it is corporate and the lobbyists have worked for decades to purposefully create a system that the government is forced to work to. So that various major corporations can regularly rip the treasury off. The US government is trapped in a cycle of lobbyist corruption that purposefully runs down government services in order to privatise work via contracts that deliver virtually nothing but cost a fortune and purposefully make the government look bad so they can privatise etc etc etc.

Re:Rearrange the deck chairs.

[raftpeople]

That site isn't that complicated and there's nothing new and innovative on it. If they brought in the right people and busted ass for a few weeks they could have an open source alternative built and tested.

Oh, ok, a few weeks? My largest project was orders of magnitude smaller than this project and you couldn't even complete testing in a "few weeks". I don't think you have any clue the complexity of this project or time required for large/complex projects.

Re:Rearrange the deck chairs.

[zippthorne]

The real question is why isn't it open source right now. As a taxpayer, I paid for (a part of) this thing. I want to be see the source code for my health care exchange software.

Maybe we can FOIA it?

Re: Rearrange the deck chairs.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm VERY familiar with this project. There are a handful of good people from contractors and the software vendors there, including some Open Source folks, but they are trying to swim up a waterfall. "Speed, cost, quality. Pick 2" with a fixed deadline and fixed scope really means sacrifice all three.

Posted AC for obvious reasons. And posted at 2:30 am because working around the clock really means around the fucking clock.

Re:Rearrange the deck chairs.

[wisty]

Is it being developed by private contractors?

The US is required to make all their work public domain in the United States (kinda). But they can end-run it by hiring contractors, instead of employees.

It would be in the spirit of the law to require that all work by contractors is also public domain (to the extent to which it is technically feasible - I guess they can't force companies to release library code so easily), but they don't really care.

Re:Rearrange the deck chairs.

[BlueStrat]

by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 20, 2013 @06:28PM (#45183607)

Punish the innocent, Promote the guilty, Reward the uninvolved

Wow! Thanks for posting on /. Mr. President!

Strat

Re:Rearrange the deck chairs.

[Salgak1]

This is referred to as the "get 9 women pregnant to get a baby in a month" paradigm.

It works about as well in systems development as it does in reality. . . .

Re:Rearrange the deck chairs.

[RabidReindeer]

the question is, what is all that data being shared among multiple agencies? how fucking hard is it to verify the vast majority for eligibility? ssn? check. native born? check. irs can do that with one simple check with ssa. paid taxes? check. for others eligible, e.g. naturalized citizens and resident aliens, one more simple check with state or justice. done. it can all be done on income tax return. once verified, only need to check with ssa each year to make sure the covered persons are still alive. don't file? not eligible. easy. irs can do everything, so simple, even send out the 'insurance cards' every year..... if we had a simple, common sense, single payer system.

Oh yes, I recognize you.

"All You Have To Do Is..."

Re:Rearrange the deck chairs.

[jimbolauski]

"It doesn't matter how many guys you put on the job the baby is still going to take 9 months"
A former manager at my company during a telecon with the board of directors.

Re:Rearrange the deck chairs.

[lysdexia]

Generally followed by "Can't you just ..."

Re:Rearrange the deck chairs.

[LordLimecat]

The one that was supposed to magically work day 1 to support the kind of load that every other website grew to support organically?

Every other site that grew organically didnt have the backing of a few hundred million dollars behind it. This is a federally mandated and funded thing, I dont think they have the same concerns facebook or twitter had during their early days.

Re:Rearrange the deck chairs.

[HornWumpus]

Charliemopps has NEVER shipped code. That's obvious from the parent post.

Re:Rearrange the deck chairs.

[strong_epoxy]

That's a pretty strong indictment of the Democrats that put this together. Are you sure you want to go there?

Re:Rearrange the deck chairs.

[MooseMiester]

Even the lapdog media is running stories today about what a complete disaster this is, and how the Democrats own it.

Of course the liberals who post online will find someone else to blame, it is their #1 skill, it is always someone else's fault, always, no matter what.

Yes, the Federal Contracting process has been politicized and turned into a bribery system like no other. Sadly that never comes up when talking about issues like climate science, solar energy, ethanol, etc. -- all of which have been hopelessly corrupted by politics.

Re: Rearrange the deck chairs.

[AvitarX]

Well, cost clearly hasn't been controlled, so speed and quality would be what is expected, so that phrase is meaningless.

Re: Rearrange the deck chairs.

[hovelander]

Is it true that the whims and changes to the specifications up until late September have been a major impediment?

Seems like it was a nightmare from the start. That you guys even got anything live and semi functioning is amazing and commendable. People will complain, bitch and whine while adding heaps of political tribalism, but know that some of us understand the constraints and thank you for the hard work dealing with the beasts of burden.

Congratulations on it not being completely unusable and able to start the real hard work of a large and organic site.

Good luck to you guys. All my empathy and none of my envy to ya.

Re:Rearrange the deck chairs.

[kmoser]

There's a way around that: adopt.

Re:Rearrange the deck chairs.

[rtb61]

Dude, I'm Australian, and I'm trying to make sure what ever colour branded, animal mascoted US government is the current puppet of choice doesn't export that corporate insanity to Australia via corrupt trade agreements. So Uncle Tom or Mr Crazy Pants, who gives a crap, if it wasn't for the even crazier Tea Baggers that Mr Crazy Pants would have been saddled with, you couldn't tell the difference.

Re:Rearrange the deck chairs.

[Bite The Pillow]

You are parroting numbers that have been debunked. Twitter and Facebook had a long time to get where it was - due to last-minute requirements changes, this by all reports had no real testing.

Twitter and Facebook were all about revealing everything about you except your password to everyone else, while this has HIPAA and piles of other privacy concerns. To say they had different concerns is gross understatement.

The part that changed last minute is the part that is broken - the idea that you have to register first in order to see actual prices. If it were any other site, that could have been phased in, but people had to see the newest code first, which is the stuff most likely to break.

Nothing I have said was sourced anywhere but here, on slashdot, with appropriate citations. Why you felt the need to chime in with incorrect and irrelevant observations I'll never know.

I've got a better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Prototype and test. Go open source if you want to do so, but it isn't a silver bullet. If you don't test your software under simulated load conditions, you won't know if it will work. And for a work in progress, open source may have a delayed benefit time of several months before you get the feedback you need. People scratch their own itches in open source. They don't necessarily look at the entire system integrity. Only testing will do that.

Re:I've got a better idea

[Sir_Sri]

And there's no data like real world data for load. At some point you sit down in a room and guess how people are going to use your software. You put it out there, and find out you were wrong.

That is after all, why they did this with a couple of months to spare.

Are there going to be 10 million people over christmas all trying to buy health insurance? Probably, and that's going to cause no end of grief, but there isn't some mystical open source fairy that can tell you how to correctly predict load for a system like this and make all the infrastructure work the way you want it to. Particularly with health care and open source you'd have to deal with thousands of tea party programmers trying to fuck it up too.

Re:I've got a better idea

[fizzer06]

"simulated load conditions"

What I have learned about the software (from /.), this pig wasn't going to work under any load.

Re:I've got a better idea

[Bodero]

there isn't some mystical open source fairy that can tell you how to correctly predict load for a system like this and make all the infrastructure work the way you want it to.

You mean they haven't built an infrastructure whereby you can design and build your software to support a near-infinite level of scaling?

If only we lived in a world where Amazon Web Services and their competitors existed.

I'm all for it

[cold fjord]

I'm all for it just as long as the mandates are delayed until the infrastructure is really done this time.* When does the RFP go out?

* And maybe a "few" other kinks in the law ironed out.

Re:I'm all for it

[Sarten-X]

Of course, let's do nothing unless it's perfect. If a few million people suffer or die in the meantime, at least we can look on and say we weren't flawed.

Re:I'm all for it

[sumdumass]

I would rather do nothing while people suffer and die then do something that causes people to suffer and die. You see, the difference is that on one, the results are the actions of fate and flaws, in the other, the results are the actions of me or you or whoever did whatever.

But more specifically, in this case anyways, if nothing is done, all that will happen is the status quo remains with the added bonus of a tax penalty digging into the pockets of Americans. If the penalty is removed, the same is true without the penalty. If all is fixed, then people can actually use the tools provided to them to avoid the penalty and the status quo is removed.

Re:I'm all for it

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a load of bull. There is a difference between insurance and healthcare. The main problem the ACA was supposedly trying to solve was a 15% uninsured rate. There were many reasons why that 15% didn't have coverage, including no small part of it that could afford insurance, but didn't want to pay for it. So the Democratic party grabbed hold of 100% of the market, not the 15% that was the problem, and started rearranging things with a hasty, thrown together plan that was scraped up from whatever they thought they could pass in short order with very unusual parliamentary maneuvering (remember "deemed to pass"?) and written in part by a "progressive" think tank. The result still won't cover 100%, not even close, has raised rates for many people, has ended up costing many people both their insurance and income since their work hours were cut back, caused economic contraction due to businesses pulling headcounts under the limits, and plenty of other problems. And the best part is, they expect it to ultimately fail so that they can force single payer on everyone! How does that figure into your BS comment "let's do nothing unless it's perfect. If a few million people suffer or die in the meantime "? How about this - why don't we do something deliberately, in a planned fashion, that has wide support in society? How about we just don't throw crap to say we did something? Are you planning to take responsibility for the people that die without insurance now that this bad piece of law, this planned failure has passed? One of the principal precepts of medical ethics is, "first, do no harm". The idea should be to do something that is both useful and productive, not just "something" that is already expected to be destructive and fail. The cure is going to be worse than the disease in this case. But at least it will be hideously expensive. For some reason I doubt you read much in the way of criticism of the law, but your conscience will be clear because "something" was done.

Re:I'm all for it

[Rockoon]

Poverty kills more people than all health problems combined.

Re:I'm all for it

[rotorbudd]

Damn, where are my mod points when they are needed?

Re:I'm all for it

[sumdumass]

Nice reading comprehension there. Where did I say buying health insurance was going to kill someone? Oh I didn't. So your comment is about what?

Re:I'm all for it

[Anonymous Coward]

The GOP won the House, where all spending starts.

Re:I'm all for it

[Bananenrepublik]

There were many reasons why that 15% didn't have coverage, including no small part of it that could afford insurance, but didn't want to pay for it. So the Democratic party grabbed hold of 100% of the market, not the 15% that was the problem

If you don't see the connection between the two than you have spent no time actually thinking about the law. People who could buy insurance but don't are usually healthy. Take them out of the risk pool, and insurance becomes more expensive for everyone, increasing the incentive not to get insurance for everyone who can do without. But even though they are healthy and don't want insurance, you know that at some point, maybe 10 years down the line, maybe 20, they will also need health care.

Re:I'm all for it

[sabbede]

Well, that would be the sensible thing. Identify the problem, determine the cause, and develop a fix. But this is government, so the course of action is this: Identify a problem, assume the cause is the ideology of your opponents, and jam through a 'fix' for the symptoms the instant you have the votes.

Re:I'm all for it

[LordLimecat]

If a few million people suffer or die in the meantime,

Wow, THATS not hyperbole.

Remind me, how many people are dying in the US due to lack of insurance? Not that I think theres going to be a terribly accurate way of measuring that, but I think even liberal estimates would be substantially lower than "a few million".

This sentiment also demonstrates one of the dangers: That its no longer considered a personal responsiblity to maintain your health / insurance / affairs-- its the government's responsibility.

Re:I'm all for it

[LordLimecat]

Poverty kills more people than all health problems combined.

Bull. Combined deaths in the US for starvation and exposure are quite low, around 20,000 last time I checked-- and thats for all reasons and all age groups.

You probably get more people dying from the flu annually (over 30,000) than people dying from "being poor".

Re:I'm all for it

[LordLimecat]

You could make the same argument about computers and technology access for poor people: By holding on to that computer for as long as possible instead of upgrading every year, you cause the prices for tech to remain higher than they could be. Maybe we should mandate yearly computer replacements for all people to keep prices down?

You do realize that its not really my responsibility as a citizen to subsidize your health decisions, right?

Re:I'm all for it

[Politburo]

I remember, apparently you do not. Deem and pass was discussed, but was never actually used for the passage of PPACA. It's also not that unusual, has been used 30-50 times per Congress in the last 20 years.

Re:I'm all for it

[Politburo]

You could try to make the same argument about computers. But you would, and did, fail.

Re:I'm all for it

[SillyHamster]

If you don't see the connection between the two than you have spent no time actually thinking about the law. People who could buy insurance but don't are usually healthy. Take them out of the risk pool, and insurance becomes more expensive for everyone, increasing the incentive not to get insurance for everyone who can do without. But even though they are healthy and don't want insurance, you know that at some point, maybe 10 years down the line, maybe 20, they will also need health care.

If you think *your* health insurance costs are dependent upon the activity of everyone else in the pool, you don't understand what insurance *is*.

Health insurance is a gamble where you bet against your health. If you get sick, you get a payout that will help you cover the healthcare costs; if you don't get sick, "the house wins". Every premium is calculated to pay more than your expected value of healthcare costs. On average, you always "lose", but you mitigate catastrophic risk. Everyone else's healthiness only matters as far as they affect the average and the degree your insurance company judges you to be average.

Think of car insurance - if you get into major accidents every year, you're a high risk driver, and insurance will charge you more, or might not even bother selling you a policy. If you're a safe driver with a 100% clean record, insurance can treat you as a lower risk driver and give you lower premiums. The average young male driver is a higher risk driver; but we don't tell older drivers to insure for the sake of lowering the insurance costs for young males; we just charge young drivers more because they do cost more.

Insurance is not "healthy/low risk" people subsidizing (!) "unhealthy/high risk" people. It is everyone, high risk or low risk, paying for their own average costs. (with some overhead to keep insurance company sustainable and able to handle unexpected payout surges)

Re:I'm all for it

[MooseMiester]

Classic blamestorming. If there's one idea taken from the opposition, then the whole idea is the oppositions fault, therefore we are not to blame.

Re: I'm all for it

[SillyHamster]

you are ignoring the fact that people without insurance get treatment regardless of whether they have insurance or not.

Car insurance is insurance. If you get in a car accident, does your car get fixed independent of whether or not you have insurance? Or perhaps more precisely - does it get fixed without payment?

No, outside of a very charitable mechanic.

Emergency care can be handled quite well with health insurance - insure against an emergency; and when a legit emergency occurs, the insurance covers it. Don't buy insurance, you pay for the ER treatment yourself. That ERs are forced by law to treat regardless of payment is a government introduced market distortion - one that probably introduced more harm than it prevented. (such as rising healthcare costs and increased insurance premiums)

None of what you said contradicts my claim: Insurance is not subsidies - it is individuals paying for their own expected healthcare costs.

Re: I'm all for it

[Bananenrepublik]

How are you going to determine if someone has insurance if they would die if not treated immediately? Sorry, emergency care has to be free. Unless you want to encourage poor parents not to drive their child to the emergency room because it would bankrupt them.

Re: I'm all for it

[SillyHamster]

How are you going to determine if someone has insurance if they would die if not treated immediately? Sorry, emergency care has to be free. Unless you want to encourage poor parents not to drive their child to the emergency room because it would bankrupt them.

If only there was a way for people to receive the life-saving healthcare first and then pay for it after the fact. People would promise to pay, and then pay it back over time, maybe with a small amount of interest. Something like a credit card or a mortgage. Or maybe the government could pay ERs for every single patient they force doctors to treat for free.

Emergency care is not free - unless you think the doctors and nurses who provide that life-saving treatment do not deserve to be paid a cent for their skills and time.

At this point

[Anonymous Coward]

It's probably not even salvageable. Starting over would be the best choice. But, let's be honest, even a correctly functioning website still doesn't alleviate the massive problems inherent in the law itself. It was a pork laden bill designed for corporate crony interests, which is structurally why it will never work.

No, having government oversight of such a large part of our economy was a bad decision. There are no winners here.

Re:At this point

[Anonymous Coward]

Brilliant, instead we should led the corporate crony interests control it directly, like they have been.

Ah, the IBM way...

[billcarson]

Let the community fix your broken products for free.
I don't know if that is ethically responsible for a government to do.

How interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://torrentfreak.com/obama-administration-uses-pirated-code-on-healthcare-gov-131019/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TorrentfreakBits+%28TorrentFreak+-+Bits%29&utm_content=FaceBook

"As it turns out, the Government website uses the open source software DataTables, which is a plug-in for the jQuery Javascript library.

While using open-source software is fine, the makers of Healthcare.gov decided to blatantly remove all references to its owners or the original copyright license."

It failed because they went with the lowest bidder

[Pinhedd]

healthcare.gov didn't fail because the designers didn't use open source software at every point in the chain - if the rumors are to be believed, an audit found open source code in there that had simply had its licence removed - it failed because it was designed by the lowest bidder and was not subject to the rigorous testing regime demanded by a national service.

FOSS is great for reigning in costs, but it is not a patch for unskilled developers or a crutch for incompetent project managers who are unable to keep the project on track and within scope.

routine IT work

[globaljustin]

TFA, and virtually everything I've seen on 'Obamacare' are not helpful

First, I've yet to see *one* legitamit (or even fringe) news organization film themselves without editing sit down at a computer and **attempt to enroll in ACA**...if this exits, please post a link

2nd, a major problem of this article (and again virtually every news or analysis on ACA I've seen) is the lack of necessary information distinguishing **STATE EXCHANGES** and the **NATIONAL EXCHANGE**

I hear it mentioned that the two exist, and are different, and I see a map that shows which states have their own ACA program and which do not, therefore defaulting to the Federal system....however I absolutely have not heard any distinction made when any blog/news report/etc mentions 'Obamacare's failures'

3rd, The problems of "Obamacare" are myriad to be sure, but in the coverage of the "rollout of the website" no IT workers are interviews...no one with any expertise actually explains what the problems are...

We can easily understand (if you visit the website) & read a few news reports that the website's "failure" is a timeout when people try to sign up. Again, we don't know if this is the *state* or *federal* exchange, but the point is that the website breaks b/c of too many hits.

Server over capacity.

A few news articles to explain this much, but not any more.

what does /. call 'server over capacity' type problems???

ROUTINE IT WORK

I used to have my CCNA, it has lapsed. I'm not pretending rolling out a functional site like ACA is easy, but it's **well known** how to make a system like that, from a web coding perspective, work.

It's routine IT work done daily all over the world.

So, the real analysis is that the ACA needs more servers.

It's that simple....note 'simple' does not in any way mean "easy"....but the concept is well understood by many IT engineers.

"an open-source approach" is usually helpful in any system experiencing major problems...but this is routine IT work....not in any way a massive failure

if you want to assign blame: blame the contractor that got the 1$billion to develop the ACA site

Re:routine IT work

[complete loony]

Building a web site for a hobby is very different to the approaches you need for massive scale. If you took a look at how the largest web sites scale, they all do things slightly differently, and they all had to fix their scalability problems gradually as their popularity increased. Throwing more CPU and RAM at the problem may be unable to fix anything if their current software design doesn't allow for it.

Re:routine IT work

[Bartles]

It's not possible to film it unedited. It took me more than 3 hours to do, and my application was still f'd up to the point I can't buy insurance.

Re:routine IT work

[phantomfive]

Testing was scheduled to begin the week before the site went live. Do you really think it's just a problem of adding more servers?

Re:routine IT work

[gnoshi]

1. A rose by any other name
2. Healthcare.gov != Obamacare

Re:routine IT work

[Dcnjoe60]

Nice to keep beating the 'ACA' drum, but it's really Obamacare. You can't polish a turd.

Turd or not, it is really called the Affordable Care Act (actually Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) Nowhere in the congressional record will you see a bill called Obamacare or the GOP trying to amend Obamacare. However, you will find plenty of citations to the PPACA.

Re:routine IT work

[guruevi]

Or RomneyCare!

Re:routine IT work

[Sir_Sri]

While that's certainly true, designing a system for 5 million users versus 10 million users is not radically different - but if 10 million users all try and hit your server designed for 5 million you're going to have problems.

There's no way healthcare.gov was done as a 'hobby' type site - they guessed wrong on the load they were going to have and there seem to be some issues with how the insurance companies hook up to the system - neither of which is encouraging but it's not like they intended 100 users and got a million.

Although it would be interesting to know if some of this is largely a 'first day' sort of problem, where the first few weeks just has way too many users and by mid november it will be more or less settled. And then all the people who didn't sign up will panic and need to over christmas and there will be problems again.

Re:routine IT work

[complete loony]

But even when designing for 5 million users, it's very difficult to test for that load without having 5 million actual users. There will inevitably be a bottleneck you didn't think of that fails under real loads, that you didn't or couldn't test for. A bottleneck that can't simply be fixed with more servers.

Re:routine IT work

[_xeno_]

Obama calls it "Obamacare." That's good enough for me to call it Obamacare.

I'd also call it "broken" and "in desperate need of repeal," but that's because I live in Massachusetts and already watched Romneycare flame out. Enjoy repeating the process, rest of the nation. It was a nice experiment here, too bad it didn't work.

Re:routine IT work

[adri]

Why do people keep saying that over and over again?

It's easy. You write a test suite that pretends to be a real user. You script it so there's some actions that aren't just "do A do B do C." You make them make errors. You have them put in garbage details. You have them fill out the forms incorrectly or incompletely. You have them skip pages or press "back".

Then you add a "pretend I'm the internet!" layer in between that simulates latency, so you make sure that your servers can handle the number of concurrent requests going on. A lot of not-so-seasoned web developers still fall for the "it worked on the LAN to 100,000 users, why not on the internet?" latency fallacy. Increased latency (due to RTT, packet drops, TCP retransmits, etc) leads to having more and more sessions going concurrently. That ties up resources at the server end.

Then you add a "pretend shit breaks!" layer. Ie, the user internet connection breaks. They forget and come back after a while, and hit the restart page. The connection dies half way during the transaction.

Then, once you've written that, you create 5 million instances of that. 100,000 per box sounds about right.

This isn't 1995. Computers are really god damned fast.

-adrian

Re:routine IT work

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't polish a turd.

Myth: Busted. You can, in fact, polish a turd.

Re:routine IT work

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a pretty bad failure. I did successfully create my account -- and it felt a bit slow, but it did end up succeeding. The username/password requirements are fucking terrible, but I did manage to create an account. It took 4 tries to login successfully, but it kept timing out (after several minutes) when sending my request to eidm.cms.gov.

This site should have never gone live as is.

That being said, the site looks nice when it works. Performance issues and other quality issues need to be addressed ASAP.

Re:routine IT work

[LandGator]

Yup. Do it all the time in the lab. No-brainer. Which lab, I'm not sayin'.

Re:routine IT work

[mspohr]

The Republicans started calling it Obamacare and they meant it as an insult.
However, when people pay word games like this, it's best to just embrace it which is what Obama did do... he's fine with the term and taking credit for the law (the good and the bad).

Re:routine IT work

[complete loony]

And then you add integration with all of the 3rd party legacy systems on the back end..., That level of scalability testing is possible, but unlikely. It demands a test system that perfectly mirrors the production system. And I mean perfectly, down to the wiring, switches and routers. Then you have to model your user behaviour accurately, which is difficult for a system that doesn't have any real users yet.

If you can't build such a test system, or your tests don't reflect the typical actions of your users, something could slip through the cracks. If your tests with 100,000 users on one server, that doesn't mean that production will work with 5 million users on 50 servers.

Re:routine IT work

[wooferhound]

Turd or not, it is really called the Affordable Care Act

It should be called the UHA , Unaffordable Healthcare act . . .

Re:routine IT work

[Sir_Sri]

We keep saying it over and over because:

It's easy.

Isn't true, at all. Watch 1000 volunteers all try and test your system, and then try and simulate that behaviour to model however many you think you'll have - and you still get surprised.

Yes, definitely you should have testing for all the cases of what a user can do. But you don't know how people are really going to use a system until they're using it for real. As it turns out real use is different than testing, and an early tester sample are not really a good sample.

Let me give you an example of how synthetic tests will go badly. You get some fake numbers from your partners so they all have either completely random prices, or they all have exactly the same price. So when you're testing users click around, and no problem right, they can select the one they want etc.

Then you get real data, in the real world - and one company posts a price 3% lower than the other guy but it's for a slightly different product. So before, where users clicked the same thing once, now a bunch of them are clicking back and forth loading the page multiple times doing so, they're sending them to their friends to compare etc.

It then takes your assumption about 100 000 users per box to maybe 70, 80 or 90 or some number not quite enough when you scale up to 5 million.

Re:routine IT work

[Phroggy]

Turd or not, it is really called the Affordable Care Act (actually Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) Nowhere in the congressional record will you see a bill called Obamacare or the GOP trying to amend Obamacare. However, you will find plenty of citations to the PPACA.

You're right about the first part, but wrong about the second part.

H.R.132 : ObamaCare Repeal Act
H.R.1005 : Defund Obamacare Act
H.R.2087 : Protecting Taxpayer Dollars and Identity under Obamacare Act
H.R.2125 : No IRS Implementation of Obamacare Act
H.R.2443 : Safeguarding Children Harmed by Obamacare's Onerous Levies Act
H.R.2682 : Defund Obamacare Act of 2013
H.R.3067 : No Obamacare Subsidies for Members of Congress Act of 2013
S.177 : ObamaCare Repeal Act
S.1292 : Defund Obamacare Act of 2013
S.1497 : No Exemption for Washington from Obamacare Act

Re:routine IT work

[adri]

... it's called fuzzing.

You spend a bit more time writing some randomisation into your clients so they go off and do completely ridiculous stuff. stuff you can't comprehend. That's why it's random (ie, fuzzing.)

again, this isn't new.

And yes, if you write your client simulation object(s) in something not stupid, you can scale it up to 100,000 active user simulation instances on a single server. Computers are fast.

Re:routine IT work

[jimbolauski]

You mean to tell me that a centralized database that millions of people are trying to access can't be fixed by adding a few cpus and a couple sticks of ram. I guarantee that there is a single server handling all the queries for some critical part of this mess, they could probably figure out which server just by fan noise.

Re:routine IT work

[Sir_Sri]

... it's called fuzzing.

And Fuzzing sucks, because you're making assumptions about how much to add still. And your assumptions can easily turn out to be wrong.

Real data isn't necessarily random - that was the example I gave you for a reason. Systematic biases introduced into real use you can't simulate for. Random usage patterns you can *try* and fuzz, but you can easily screw that up, depends on the system.

again, this isn't new.

No it definitely isn't. This sort of stuff has been around hundreds of years, and if you think 'fuzzing' will deal with systematic biases in your data you should probably come back to school, we'll sort you out when you get to second year.

Computers are fast.

But finite. That you can do with 10 computers what took 100 before doesn't change the problems caused by having half (or 1/4) the number of computers that you actually needed.

The moment you cannot fit the entire problem on one box with room to spare you are into all of the problems of running out of capacity, which are not new.

Re:routine IT work

[Dcnjoe60]

Turd or not, it is really called the Affordable Care Act (actually Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) Nowhere in the congressional record will you see a bill called Obamacare or the GOP trying to amend Obamacare. However, you will find plenty of citations to the PPACA.

You're right about the first part, but wrong about the second part.

H.R.132 : ObamaCare Repeal Act
H.R.1005 : Defund Obamacare Act
H.R.2087 : Protecting Taxpayer Dollars and Identity under Obamacare Act
H.R.2125 : No IRS Implementation of Obamacare Act
H.R.2443 : Safeguarding Children Harmed by Obamacare's Onerous Levies Act
H.R.2682 : Defund Obamacare Act of 2013
H.R.3067 : No Obamacare Subsidies for Members of Congress Act of 2013
S.177 : ObamaCare Repeal Act
S.1292 : Defund Obamacare Act of 2013
S.1497 : No Exemption for Washington from Obamacare Act

Those are short or working titles, not actual titles for instance HR 132's full title is "To repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010." It makes sense, really. If you are going to repeal or otherwise amend a previous "Act" you actually have to officially name the Act you are going to repeal or amend. Working titles and short titles are just so when talking about it they don't have to pronounce the full title, but the full title is the official title.

Re:routine IT work

[Dcnjoe60]

Turd or not, it is really called the Affordable Care Act

It should be called the UHA , Unaffordable Healthcare act . . .

That would first have to be demonstrated. As it stands now, the affordability of it is still not decided.

Re:routine IT work

[Dcnjoe60]

The Republicans started calling it Obamacare and they meant it as an insult.
However, when people pay word games like this, it's best to just embrace it which is what Obama did do... he's fine with the term and taking credit for the law (the good and the bad).

Yeah, the surest way to defuse is the derogatory nature of the term Obamacare is for its supporters to grab hold of it and use it for their own purposes. Whether one approves of the ACA or Obama or not, you have to admit that was pretty shrewd.

Re:routine IT work

[Dcnjoe60]

Obama calls it "Obamacare." That's good enough for me to call it Obamacare.

I'd also call it "broken" and "in desperate need of repeal," but that's because I live in Massachusetts and already watched Romneycare flame out. Enjoy repeating the process, rest of the nation. It was a nice experiment here, too bad it didn't work.

How can it be broken if it hasn't even started yet? One thing everybody agrees on is that the system prior to the ACA was broken. The ACA is far from perfect, but with all of these GOP attempts to repeal it, where are the GOP solutions to fix the original broken system? Maybe if they came up with a plan to fix the original broken system, they'd have a better chance at repealing the ACA.

Re:routine IT work

[Phroggy]

Thanks, I got these titles from thomas.loc.gov and it didn't occur to me that they wouldn't be the official titles.

They already tried this.

[Seumas]

The government already tried this. Remember their $18m Drupal websites over the last few years? Just because it *can* improve the process and *can* reduce the costs doesn't mean government will manage to accomplish that. They can make the best open source just as shitty and expensive as the worst proprietary, with great ease.

Healthcare.gov is not Facebook

[Twillerror]

Am I the only one that thinks things have gotten a bit hyperbolic. I hear a lot of non technical people talking about how "bad" the architecture is.

This is a new product and has more users a few weeks in then most of the big boys had in over a year.

We are not selling a iPhone or a plane ticket here. This is a complex infrastructure with lots of back end interactions. The front end is fairly modern. They haven't gotten around to minimizing and consolidating the JS files, but that will come I'm sure.

I've gotten through the sign up process, they added some stuff to do some ad-hoc shopping. I've seen much more dragging of feet by supposed enterprise players. What are we 20 days into this enormous platform? Most of the people complaining don't even need the damn thing because they already have insurance.

At the end of the day the exchanges are not even selling insurance. Insurance companies are doing that. It's like using googles shopping feature. Ultimately the insurance company is Amazon.com. If you need the insurance you'll go directly to the person selling it. Hell we probably should have started with the exchanges being nothing more than a fancy craigslist.

People who need insurance because they are sick or scared will get it. They will get the subsidies etc. The vast majority of these so called "healthy young" are just declining insurance through there employers. They just have to fill out a bunch of paper work with their HR department.

At the end of the day healthcare.gov is something to help people get insurance. The subsides and the new rules are what will get it for them.

Re:Healthcare.gov is not Facebook

[Bartles]

ehealthinsurance.com, does everything healthcare.gov is supposed to do. It works exceptionally well.

Re:Healthcare.gov is not Facebook

[jsepeta]

But it fails for me in the sign-up phase. That means that it's not even touching the supposed complex infrastructure. I can't even get a fucking account started.

Re:Healthcare.gov is not Facebook

[bill_mcgonigle]

You might not want to - there was a news story the other day about "no privacy expected" being the <standard_disclaimer> on the site. This might get straightened out sooner or later, but for now beware of disclosing medical or financial information to such a site.

Can't

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't utilize talent they can't control. If they tried then inconvenient questions would be posed, like "why can't we just show them the cost of plans?" Instead, they need people that obey and build a site that deliberately obscures costs behind subsidies and keeps citizen outrage to a minimum.

So no, they won't be employing uncooperative talent that might fail to appreciate the political sensitives involved.

Typical National, 1.0 launch in early few weeks

[kervin]

I understand the political grandstanders on both sides using this in their latest talking points but I really expected a bit more from Slashdot. Crashing Websites, Grumbling Users: Obamacare's Debut Is a Typical Tech Launch is the most balanced and informed article I've seen written on this topic.

Basically the webs has been out for little 2-3 weeks now. It's a National rollout. And it's all on 1.0 code. Of course there will be issues. Network design is done using estimates, but scaling is done using metrics. Load-testing with a 100K concurrent user target will not help you when 200K users show up at your door.

This is all business as usual at the start of the sign-up period. Where users can also call in their applications and also fill them out in person. I'd be surprised if they couldn't mail in their applications as well.

Re:Typical National, 1.0 launch in early few weeks

[Rockoon]

You do know that shooting towards the middle doesn't automatically make something balanced, right?

If one side is right and the other side is complete spin, then the middle is just less spin than complete spin. Given this, under your definition of "balanced" the spinners can arbitrarily control where the "balanced" point is by ramping up or ramping down the amount of spin as necessary.

The fact is that many people are required by law to use this thing within the next 71 days, but it continues to not work.

Re:Typical National, 1.0 launch in early few weeks

[Blitter]

Yeah, that was a good article.

But, the government isnt forcing me use Apple or Amazon or Google or Netflix or Whatever. So if you pass a law that makes me pay an extra tax if i dont use it when i can't get insurance elsewhere, then make the web site work, NO excuses, I dont care if the technical problems are insurmountable, NO excuses, it better work or don't pass that law.

This misses the point

[Karmashock]

Not only did they not want to go open source they offered the contract to ONE company. There was no open bid.

It gets worse. They also didn't want the programmers available for congressional subpoena. The whole thing was done as secretively and opaquely as possible.

This isn't a failure of system design. Its idiots destroying thing by trying to do everything in the most sneaky and underhanded manner possible.

Answer this... if we knew everything about Obamacare at the time of voting that we know now... would it have passed?

No.

Which is why they don't tell us anything. They don't respect your vote. You don't get to decide. Your opinion is worthless. They will do what they want to do. And if you want something else they will lie to your face.

Was the IRS attacking political opponents of the president on purpose? Of course not. Until it was proven that they were.

Was the NSA tracking Americans domestically intentionally? Of course not. Until it was proven that they were.

Was the ATF selling guns to the drug cartels and then not arresting anyone? Of course not. Until it was proven that they were.

They don't care what is right or wrong or what you want or deserve. All irrelevant.

They have the power and you do what they say or else. The government has gotten completely out of control and it won't get better until pretty much everyone in power is removed.

Re:This misses the point

[guruevi]

And do you think it would've made any difference depending on how you voted? No. Romney would've implemented RomneyCare and the IRS, NSA and ATF would've still been corrupt because those institutions transcend administrations and politics. The government in the US has transcended any politics and choices, they are simply there, large, slow and corrupt not belonging to anyone really but typically favoring the things that are equally large, slow and corrupt but feeds them.

Re:This misses the point

[quantaman]

Answer this... if we knew everything about Obamacare at the time of voting that we know now... would it have passed?

No.

Actually yes. Every poll done on the ACA has shown that people approve of all the individual components and are a lot more approving of the whole when it's explained to them.

Which is why they don't tell us anything. They don't respect your vote. You don't get to decide. Your opinion is worthless. They will do what they want to do. And if you want something else they will lie to your face.

So I assume you disapprove of the standoff by John Boehner and the congressional Republicans. Where a minority of congressmen (ie the majority of the majority) for a party who received less than 50% of the congressional vote used the threat of an economic collapse to try and overrule the President and the Senate.

Was the IRS attacking political opponents of the president on purpose? Of course not. Until it was proven that they were.

Until it was proven that they weren't and there was no political bias to the IRS audits

Re:This misses the point

[bill_mcgonigle]

Answer this... if we knew everything about Obamacare at the time of voting that we know now... would it have passed?

Absolutely - it was passed on a purely partisan vote in a budget reconciliation bill, with its lead sponsor being 100% up front with the fact that the bill's contents were secret from the Congress. The votes were from people who wanted a "more European" system in America and the details didn't matter - this was their big chance.

That's why there's going to be continual showdowns on this issue, whatever form they might take. The big social programs and reforms that have survived have all been bipartisan efforts (yeah, yeah, the Republicans aren't socialists, the Democrats aren't conservatives - whatever). Every purely partisan program eventually gets killed.

Re:This misses the point

[quantaman]

I really don't understand the "approve of all the individual components" thing. And the "once it's explained to them thing".

I like kids.
I like barbecue sauce.
I like to eat.

Do you see where this is going?

All of the publicly stated "intentions" of the bill are good. There are, however, unintended results of the bill that are dismal and there's a good chunk of the populace worried about them. For instance, my monthly insurance premium through my employer has gone up 80% in the past two years, and the deductible has tripled. If I have the same ER trip I had three years ago again, it will cost me about 4x as much. I believe that I was middle class. I don't know that I am anymore.

The idea is that all people are getting is very biased high level descriptions and misrepresentations of the bill. When they actually look at the bill in detail they're generally fairly satisfied. As for your anecdote, do you have any way to tie those changes to the ACA?

Since you think the bill is wrong what do you think they should have done instead?

Re:This misses the point

[Karmashock]

Actually the polls have been negative and increasingly so... but Denial is a river in Egypt.

Re:This misses the point

[quantaman]

Actually I didn't say anything about the trend, I said the components were more popular than the whole, and it was more popular as a whole when explained (I couldn't track down that poll though it would be hard to do fairly). The only component that's particularly unpopular is the mandate but that's the part that's actually critical (and formerly endorsed by the Republican party).

As for the trend the polls have been pretty stable. There might be a slight negative trend in this year but the polling data is really noisy.

Btw, you didn't mention anything about my other points. The question about the shutdown/debt limit standoff, or the non-scandal with the IRS. Do you concede either of those points or do you have some issue with my reasoning?

Re:This misses the point

[Karmashock]

Sure... all politicians are bad so of course there is no reason to berate the current crop for being criminals.

Sorry. You can't use the logic of "both sides are bad" to justify the bad people in power.

Re:This misses the point

[Karmashock]

Sure... parts of any bad law are popular. I could include a policy of free cookies into a program of mass genocide and we could say "parts of the program are popular"...

Not interested in playing stupid word games with dishonest aholes. Sorry... my common courtesy is exhausted on this issue. This thing needs to be nuked from orbit. Enough stupid evasions, stupid excuses, and absurd morally abhorrent counter arguments.

Let people opt out. If your program isn't garbage then people will ACTUALLY want to be part of it rather then having to be forced into it by literal gun point.

Re:This misses the point

[quantaman]

The only way the reforms work is because of the mandate so people can't just opt in only when they get ill.

Oh, and while complaining about "stupid evasions, stupid excuses, and absurd morally abhorrent counter arguments" you use a nonsense comparison like "mass genocide" (because normal genocide isn't bad enough?) and hyperbole like "forced into it by literal gun point".

That gun you're so worried about is a fine that's a whole 2.5% of income in 2016.

And that horrible mandate was endorsed by the Heritage foundation, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Jim DeMint (current president of the Heritage foundation) as recently as 2008.

So can you step off you high horse of supposed intellectual integrity and actually show some? You've been confronted with a false conspiracy you endorsed, and I still don't know if you acknowledge you were wrong or if you'll pop out the IRS "scandal" again in the future even though you should know it's BS. You've also been confronted with the fact that the horrible individual mandate used to be a Republican favourite. Considering that you're almost certainly a fan of many of the people and organizations who formerly endorsed the mandate that's fact you really need to acknowledge.

In your first reply to me you simply changed the subject and claimed victory, I showed how your reply about the ACA growing more unpopular was false, and so you changed the subject and claimed victory again. Why are you even typing this? Anyone who happens to read the thread will notice your avoidances and evasions. And you're certainly not convincing me by ignoring inconvenient facts. If you think you have a good argument then stop evading and make it.

Re:This misses the point

[Karmashock]

1. As to the mandate, it is not a requirement unless you offer little things like "you can get insurance AFTER you're sick." Well that isn't how insurance works. So yes, if you pervert the whole way insurance works then you need to have silly policies like forcing everyone to join.

2. As to mass genocide, the point was that your argument that SOME of the bill was popular was idiotic given that the whole bill is not. Parts of any bill no matter how abhorrent will be popular. Your comment was a stupid evasion meant to confuse morons. I am not a moron so I don't find it compelling.

3. As to being forced at gun point, if I refuse to join you will shoot me. Not immediately but if I refuse then the government will escalate and eventually I will get shot. That is what backstops your policy. Threats of physical violence. Again, not immediately... but eventually. Because I suspect you're not going to understand this... I'll be explicit. If I don't opt in the IRS will fine me. If I don't pay that IRS fine then IRS will attempt to collect the money through its various tax powers. If I resist those the IRS will go into hostile collections mode and try to get the money ceased. If I resist that then at some point they'll send men with guns after me. Remove that final element and your whole stupid policy falls apart. You need that threat of violence to make the mandate a mandate. That is what backstops your policy. You are putting a gun against my head on this issue. You might want to speak softly about it before pulling the trigger but you are fully wiling to kill me over this issue. And for that I hate you with justification. You're a thuggish piece of shit.

4. As to the mandate and various similar GOP ideas before, why is the GOP suddenly not in favor of your grand scheme? I mean, if it was our idea and we like it so much then we should be all over it... right? Is it because Obama is black? Is it racism? You're a fool. The policy has some similarities but is very different. And even if it were identical it was mostly pushed as a STATE idea and not a federal idea. And even then it was never really vetted by anyone at large. Passing an idea around to a few think tanks doesn't mean millions of people are going to approve it.

As to claiming victory, there are no winners here. You're destroying this country and are too stupid to realize it. Your ideology rots everything it touches. When you win... everyone loses.

Re:This misses the point

[quantaman]

1. So what's your proposal for dealing with people without insurance who get sick? Because the current system is they go to emergency and get treated in a very inefficient manner.

2. My point was you were using ridiculous hyperbole.

3. Using that logic they're also to pay the parking meter at gunpoint.

4. The mandate was developed in 1989, they had almost 20 years to vet it. And the Federal vs State distinction is nonsense. The Republicans pushed it as a Federal program as an alternative to Clinton's proposal. Romney suggested his system be used on a national scale and no one really disagreed. The only point Republicans started making the state vs federal argument was in an effort to differentiate it from the ACA and have an excuse to oppose the ACA. Even then they barely make the argument because it's frankly a weak argument.

As for the reason Republicans now oppose it. The Republicans developed a legislative strategy of strong party discipline at the start of Obama's term. If Republicans vote for a bill it automatically becomes bi-partisan, so if no Republicans vote for it than it's not bi-partisan. If the president's major legislation isn't bi-partisan then it's a lot easier and it's a lot easier to demonize and turn into electoral gains.

Basically unless the core of the Republican party supports a bill they're all going to vote against it. Since successful healthcare reform would be a major legislative victory for Obama Republicans decided they wouldn't support it no matter what. Hence they turned on their own idea and demonized it for future political gain.

Re:This misses the point

[quantaman]

So it does sound like the Tea Party groups were being targeted to a greater extent (but not exclusively) though I'm not sure that's illegitimate.

"Tea Party" is a partisan term to a much greater extent than "progressive". There's lots of Republicans who identify themselves as members of the Tea Party and people have even talked about a Tea Party splitting off from the Republicans. As a term for a group it's somewhere between "progressive" and "Democrat" in its relationship to parties.

I still think it's wrong to the extent that Tea Party groups were targeted more but Tea Party is more closely associated with the Republican party than the progressive groups.

Re:This misses the point

[quantaman]

So most of that doesn't really interfere with the core of ObamaCare. Some of it would be a different approach but I could see it being incorporated and not really changing the core.

The only places where you seem to offer a fundamentally different solution is the uninsured.

Target the uninsured with a program that is based upon the fact that people are uninsured for different reasons and except that one size won't fit all for these people

Realize that for some hard cases, those with pre-existing conditions for example, a system equivalent to the National Flood Insurance program or the the Assigned Risk car insurance required by bad drivers might be the only answer. That means somebody has to pick up the high cost. That should be the insured if they can afford it and the rest of us if they can't, but that should be a small percentage of the 15%, most probably fall into the young and I'd rather buy a new car than pay for insurance group.

So instead of banning pre-existing conditions you just pay for them through the government, doesn't really change things. Instead of everybody paying through higher premiums they pay through higher taxes.

As for the healthy uninsured what happens when they get sick or get seriously injured? Who pays then?

Open Source is not a Panacea

[rockmuelle]

Look, I use open source all the time and have contributed to many projects and ran a few. I love open source just as much as the next slashdotter.

BUT, broad statements like "open source will fix healthcare.gov" don't add anything to the conversation. What if it was built on open source and it failed? Would we be making the same claims about commercial software? "If only they had used WebSphere and DB2!! Everything would have been wonderful!".

No. No. And. No.

As many people have already pointed out, the problems with healthcare.gov are mostly the same ones that plague many large scale IT projects. Insufficient testing, complex interactions between many existing complex systems (which are hard to get right), consultants that get paid for code delivered, working or not, and so on.

Now, TFA actually makes the argument that healthcare.gov as an _open platform_ would be a good idea. It goes on to point out that that's one thing that makes some of the bigger web apps successful: they are platforms for building apps rather than apps themselves. How much of that is true is open for debate (is google really a beautiful platform or is it a bunch of hacks held together by duct tape? only google engineering knows for sure...) , but as a goal, healthcare.gov as a platform isn't a bad idea.

However, platforms don't just materialize from thin air. In fact, building a platform before you have apps is a recipe for failure. It's usually only after the third or fourth app that the patterns emerge that make a platform possible. It takes time for good platforms to evolve.

Given that, designing healthcare.gov from the beginning as a platform would probably have failed, too. The developers would have created a wonderful platform for some vague requirements that likely didn't actually meet the needs of an insurance exchange at all.

From a pure software engineering perspective, what's happening right now isn't that bad. Version 1.0 launched, it had problems. Let's get working on Version 2.0 and maybe try out some new ideas. Then for Version 3.0 and 4.0, we can start thinking of a platform. The other important point here is that you have to plan for multiple versions and long term maintenance/evolution for software. The suggestion that healthcare.gov should have been run as a startup in the government rather than outsourced is probably the best idea for fixing the problem.

-Chris

Re:Open Source is not a Panacea

[codeusirae]

"broad statements like "open source will fix healthcare.gov" don't add anything to the conversation

I'm not sure if we're reading the same article. Just how difficult can it be to create a web site for flogging health insurance ?

a) Healthcare.gov is a platform for building health-care marketplaces.

b) The roll-out of healthcare.gov has been a mess.

c) Open Source methodology has a prove track record.

d) The transparency intrinsic to Open Source prevents such disasters as healthcare.gov, what ever the version.

The Obamacare Website Didn't Have to Fail

Re:Open Source is not a Panacea

[FlipperPA]

Except, they DID choose to use WebSphere. CGI Federal should pay us back our tax dollars for making the choice to use IBM WebSphere... when literally no one else (statistically relevantly) does. The stats are staggeringly in favor of choosing something like Apache, nginx, or even IIS, especially when you consider the scaling concerns already experienced by web sites with similar privacy concerns and traffic loads / spikes. I'm not saying Open Source would solve everything, but there are certainly more experts in tuning and scaling Apache than there are for WebSphere by many orders of magnitude.

Don't boil the ocean!

[sootman]

It's a ridiculously complicated system. (Scroll down to the graphic.) Figure out a way to release it in stages. Step 1, you can create an account and log in and read what the system will someday be. Step 2, make sure it's getting to all the right info from all the right places. Etc...

Signup form as of today

[watermark]

http://tinypic.com/r/2rqner7/5

Win/Win Scenario

[dicobalt]

Make it open source and easily customizable enough for other countries to use. Then put in bunch of hard to find security bugs and let the NSA exploit those bugs to spy on other countries. Two birds, one stone, everyone is happy. You're welcome.

Re: ...the ONLY bidder

[cirby]

Yes, it was the lowest, but there apparently weren't any other bidders, or at least none that anyone can find or name.

You see, they didn't actually put it out to open bidding, and instead awarded the contract to someone with political connections.

They used something called "task orders," which allows bureaucrats to completely bypass open bids. Basically, if you win one government contract somewhere along the way (even for a completely different project), it's possible for the government to award you future contracts on other projects without worrying about all of that pesky "low bidder" stuff.

No more Billion dollar systems

[EmperorOfCanada]

It has become painfully obvious to me that government IT contracts exist solely to give well connected contracting companies billions of dollars of taxpayer's money since these same large creatively dead companies can't actually come up with products that real consumers would want. My guess is that if you contracted these companies to build an iPad that it would be 1 inch thick and have a 640 x 400 resolution and have an owner's manual that came in a set of binders.

So these companies are going to fight opensource as hard as they can seeing that it destroys all kinds of things they had going for them. Open source means that other companies can come in and scoop their contracts. Open source means that people like slashdoter and the DailyWTF will go through the code highlighting crap that came from 3rd rate 3rd world outsourced coders. Open source could even mean horror upon horrors that if good code is generated that other governments will copy it and simply modify it to their own needs.

But the worst horror is that if they charge 50 billion dollars for a few thousand lines of modifications to an existing system people like us will be willing to testify at the fraud trial.

Actually there is one worse horror: that people like us contribute free functionality, upgrades, and fixes.

Re:No more Billion dollar systems

[EmperorOfCanada]

I am talking about consulting companies, not other commercial companies that produce products people want. I have worked with consulting companies and about the last thing they seem to be interested in is a solid delivery, on time, and on budget. The funny thing is that various managers run from one end of the hallway screaming that this milestone or that is being missed. But the salesmen are deeply upset if the milestones are met or the client is happy with the first version. In their world a crap version 1.0 translates to getting to sell version 2.0 in under a maintenance contract. Also another good strategy is to keep selling during development so that by continuously moving the goalposts there is no "Missed deadline".

Salesmen work on commission; so even if the commission was 0.05% on a billion dollar project that is a 5 million dollar commission. Thus a project with 1,000 plodding developers is way way way better than the same project developed by 10 great developers.

The other half of a big commission is to make a smallish project a big project. A great example of this was the 2 billion dollar Canadian gun registry. If you work out how many guns were registered it turns out it would have been cheaper to (literally) carve the records into stone tablets. How did something that small become so vastly huge?

So if all government projects were to be truly opensourced and all development and developer communications made open to the public we would quickly see if some project was a huge rip off.

Don't let the peasants think they have any say

[smittyoneeach]

If you give the people any chance to participate in government, besides paying taxes and voting for the carefully-groomed, reliable idiots, then they are likely to develop some misplaced sense of ownership.
That is absolutely NOT how this plantation is run.

Re:Don't let the peasants think they have any say

[damn_registrars]

If you give the people any chance to participate in government, besides paying taxes and voting for the carefully-groomed, reliable idiots, then they are likely to develop some misplaced sense of ownership

I know you're trying to make an argument for the Tea Party here, but that sounds distinctly like an argument against them to me... If anyone is trying to actively disenfranchise voters, it is the conservatives in the GOP and their ultra-hard-right faction called the Tea Party. The most disturbing part is just that some have taken in enough of the Kool-Aid to believe that their situation matters to the powers that are driving their "movement".

Now granted being as there is no left remaining in America - only right (democrats), further right (republicans), extreme right (libertarians), and ultra-hard right (Tea Party) - there really isn't a party left that actually gives a shit about working stiffs. But the further right one goes, the less that it matters how many of them you snuff out on the way.

Re:Don't let the peasants think they have any say

[smittyoneeach]

If anyone is trying to actively disenfranchise voters, it is the conservatives in the GOP and their ultra-hard-right faction called the Tea Party.

I'm genuinely curious how you possibly think that statement even sort of correlates to reality.
If this was an early Troll Tuesday entry, then I salute you: it's a winner.

Re:Don't let the peasants think they have any say

[damn_registrars]

If anyone is trying to actively disenfranchise voters, it is the conservatives in the GOP and their ultra-hard-right faction called the Tea Party.

I'm genuinely curious how you possibly think that statement even sort of correlates to reality.

Because the Koch Brothers cannot fool the American voters twice. If they manage to get their political movement into real power (rather than just obstruction of government - actually taking power would be fooling America once) they will need to shut down the entire voting process because even in two years people will realize what is going on that and leaving the Tea Party in power is counter to the interests of >>99% of all people in this country and beyond. Now, of course, it is possible that their game plan is to take power and then secure their hold on it through some sort of extra-extra-extralegal maneuvering to shut down voting indefinitely - as of course if there is anything that someone in power does not want it is to lose power - but otherwise the damage would be so swift and severe that they could not possibly hold on to power in the face of any reasonably fair election process.

Hence the only way they can get and hold power is to push people away from voting (one way or another). But of course, they don't fear the parts of the constitution that they dislike.

Re:Don't let the peasants think they have any say

[smittyoneeach]

Because the Koch Brothers cannot fool the American voters twice.

When did they fool Americans the first time?
When did Americans remain unfooled, and neglect to re-elect, a no-talent rodeo clown?
What have the Koch Brothers even done, other than support classical libertarian values, and try to avert the kinds of catastrophes we se unfolding now with #ObamaCare?
Why does the notion of restoring prosperity offend you so?

leaving the Tea Party in power is counter to the interests of >>99% of all people in this country and beyond

When (and be specific) has the Tea Party ever been in power? Or are you trying to say that Harry Reid is a Tea Partier? Such would be as valid as your claiming #OccupyResoluteDesk is conservative.

the only way they can get and hold power is to push people away from voting (one way or another)

Wait, are you saying that Tea Partiers are going to engage in voter fraud to achieve their goals of protecting the integrity of our founding ideals? Any evidence or basis for that? Any? As a veteran, who's served to protect this country from turning into a third world armpit (which it's becoming, alas) I find this innuendo offensive. But, as a conservative, I guess I'm supposed to accept the falsehood in silence, or something.

But of course, they don't fear the parts of the constitution that they dislike.

I dislike the 16th & 17th Amendments. Do you have a point, and, if so, what might it be?

Re:Don't let the peasants think they have any say

[damn_registrars]

I'm pretty sure I've hit a nerve with you on this one, as I know you are quite fond of the Tea Party and all that (you think) it stands for. It clearly drives your judgment on a great many things. Furthermore it appears that it may have hindered your ability to read what I wrote before writing your reply.

When did they fool Americans the first time?

The Koch brothers have only so far managed to fool a subset of America, as I stated in my comment. They want to fool a majority of the voting part of America so they can force their ultra-hard-right agenda upon us.

There is an important distinction there. I said they cannot fool America twice, because if they managed to take power they would not be able to maintain the illusion long enough to retain it in a subsequent election - at least, not one that actually allows all qualified people to vote.

a no-talent rodeo clown?

Smitty, please don't degrade yourself that way. You are way above such petty insults. Just because the Tea Party embraces such pitiful name calling doesn't mean you need to as well.

When (and be specific) has the Tea Party ever been in power?

Again, please go back and read the comment you just replied to. It seems your undies are tied up in a bunch now and you missed some important bits. I did not say they are currently in (or have thus far held) power, rather I said they would need to gain and retain power in order to achieve their objectives.

#OccupyResoluteDesk

Can we lose the silly name calling already? As far as I can tell - by using google at least - you are the only person on the entire internet who is sold on the occupy movement == obama conspiracy enough to push that name for him. Why not just refer to him by his last name like we usually do for presidents whose last names haven't been in the white house before? Your hash tag is more than twice as many keystrokes so you can't make an argument for it being less work.

Wait, are you saying that Tea Partiers are going to engage in voter fraud to achieve their goals of protecting the integrity of our founding ideals? Any evidence or basis for that?

When your group is working to make it more difficult for others to vote, that is voter fraud. Of course, because your group has sold the media on that being a "good" kind of fraud, you don't have to acknowledge it as being an active effort to suppress voters.

I guess I'm supposed to accept the falsehood in silence, or something.

Well, you're willing to vote for liars who want to pass laws that will make your life more difficult and give you less of a chance of making anything but a more profound slip into economic despair. You're also willing to adopt conspiracy theories as irrefutable facts when they propose ideas against people who are not of your party. Naturally, accepting falsehoods would go well as a critical component of your party platform.

This is obviously an idea

[toph2223]

Presented by someone with (among other things): A: not any real world experience in dealing with systems on a large scale, or, B: someone in their early twenties who thinks open source is the end all be all. Not to mention the time and cost healthcare.gov has already cost the US taxpayers, going open source at this point would be a disaster. But hey, healthcare.gov is already a joke and a disaster, so making it a disaster would be a step up, I guess...

Re:It can't be fixed.

[Microlith]

This is the worst government trainwreck of a law I have ever seen.

I've seen worse. The PATRIOT Act is one, for example.

Requiring auto insurance for drivers and (in some states) driver-license holders has demonstrably had the effect of raising auto insurance rates for all.

Oh, care to cite the data on this? Not that it's relevant to health insurance, because one can't simply opt to not get sick or hurt.

Re:How about just turn it off

[Dcnjoe60]

Amazing how the public dialog is now "how to fix socialized medicine" when just a short time ago it was more like "should we have socialized medicine?" Well played, Mr Obama.

Since most of the world has socialized medicine, and it works quite well, you probably will only find sympathy from US readers where it is fashionable to make a profit on other people being sick. Sounds like a great system. BTW, my aunt from the US was visiting here and fell and broke her hip. Our socialized medicine took very good care of her. Total bill to her, since she doesn't pay taxes here was $2,000, including ambulance, surgeons fees, etc.. She's resting comfortably back home in the States now.

It's funny, really, you have everybody pay a little, so your business people can fly for cheap, but ask them all to pay a little so sick people can be helped and you would think you asked them to cut off their arm or something.

Re:It failed because they went with the lowest bid

[moschner]

Management is the reason why healthcare.gov has been such as disaster. Open source or not, it wouldn't have mattered. They didn't even get to start coding until this spring, because the government was so slow in issuing specifications for the site. Then as if the tight deadlines were not enough, Administrators kept issuing changes to the site up until last few weeks of September (despite an October 1st launch date). It wasn't little a change here or there either.

One of the last big overhauls was making it so people had to register before they could browse the plans. This was apparently becasue they wanted people to see what the price would be with the subsidy. The idea being that for many people the price before the credit would scare them away from buying in.

There is also more info on this at the new york times

time compression (aka 'fast forwarding' the edit)

[globaljustin]

n/t

QA as an unnecessary cost.

[Ducho_CWB]

When I saw the news "Healthcare.gov sux" (or similar) my firsth thought was "QA really sux in this project".
You don't need to go open source, you need a good staff.

Re:QA as an unnecessary cost.

[Ducho_CWB]

Firsth = first.
I'm using a Surface RT. Can I use this as an excuse?

of course not

[globaljustin]

Do you really think it's just a problem of adding more servers?

as some very helpful individual elucidated in a different post on this thread: "its not like building a hobby site"

if you notice, my original post assumed a level of IT knowledge on behalf of the reader (you)

i'm saying I havent heard any problems reported professionally whatsoever, and of the reports that **do** exist mention **only** problems that, at the core, are routine IT Engineering problems

I'm demanding better journalism (re: TFA) and smarter commentary from us, /., b/c we are the kind who know this stuff (hence my assumption that you know something of IT)

who else will explain things but us (experts)?

who ever has?

the real experts need to be heard...let's speak coherently!

Re:of course not

[phantomfive]

Beginning testing a week before going live may be unfortunately common, but it's also a recipe for disaster.

SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid

[lesincompetent]

Oh my non-existing-god!
Open source? America is definitely committed to its descent into communism!

Re:It failed because they went with the lowest bid

[Anonymous Coward]

it failed because it was designed by the lowest bidder

Wrong.

It failed because it was a crony capitalism project, gifted by the Obama administration to a former campaign worker.

http://tealmedia.com/ ... Teal Media was selected as the lead visual design team on the redesign of HealthCare.gov. Check out The Atlantic article about the redesign.

http://tealmedia.com/index.html#about ... Jessica Teal - Principle ... Jessica founded Teal Media following her successful stint as Design Manager for the 2008 Obama presidential campaign.

UK gov has already done this

[ChrisRobson]

Govt in the UK went open source with their national system. Perhaps they have some lessons to share.

How to FiX Slashdot HeAdlines

[wonkey_monkey]

That is all.

open source is easier to fix

[rewindustry]

the thing i like about open source is that, even when it is broken, i can "git it and fix it" all by myself, as can anyone else so inclined. at may seem magical, but somehow the best fixes do tend to swim upstream against the current. you lot have a broken system, and from what i am hearing, you are not expecting this to get sorted any time soon, if at all. had it been open source this discussion would now be irrelevant, as the problems would have been fixed by now. i believe this has been proven, over and over again, in the real world. open source for life. (speaking of fixing things, is anyone at slashdot interested in sorting out your apparent dependency on microsoft style cr/lf?)

Re:open source is easier to fix

[asaul]

That purely depends on your skills and your available time. Assuming you have an issue on a platform of this size, and assuming you can narrow it down to say an application level component, you then are expected to grab the source and troll through it looking for possible fixes against someone else's code. Never mind the time it takes to get up to speed with the layout and architecture of the product and its source code, you have to understand it enough to the point you can modify it to work. You then need to test it and test it in your application, and then assuming it fixes your issue convince someone upstream that your fix needs to go in, or as typically happens maintain your own patch set against the code for the next time you build it because egos upstream don't agree with you.

In my role I occasionally have to spend time reworking open source tools to fit into our environment. Mostly because I have to spend time weeding linux specific coding and GCC hacks out of code that we would like to use on Solaris. Just because it is open source does not mean it is going to save you time - of course we can fix things, of course we are saving not having to pay extortion to some vendor for something just as frustrating to deal with. But please don't claim open source is a wonderful magically all healing panacea for IT problems - that is actually performed by skills and time.

Re:open source is easier to fix

[rewindustry]

People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do -- Mark Twain

A Real Solution...

[guitardood]

C>

C>format /X .gov:

C>

so routine IT work...in other words

[globaljustin]

so you're agreeing that the reports of 'Obamacare Failure' are based on faulty journalism, and that, further, what has been reported are simple IT Engineering solutions?

that's what I'm hearing...b/c you say this:

Beginning testing a week before going live may be unfortunately common, but it's also a recipe for disaster.

right...so you're saying that the contractor who was paid $1Billion to 'roll out' the site made a "common" mistake that most /. readers would catch?

glad you agree?

Re:so routine IT work...in other words

[phantomfive]

You only hear what you want to.

While I don't necessarily disagree....

[sgt_doom]

....perhaps Jessica Teal and Teal Media and a bunch of 20-somethings with limited experienced actually had something to do with the situation?

Most intelligent comments of the week . . . ..

[sgt_doom]

were made by Karmashock! Bravo!!!!!!!

Re:It failed because they went with the lowest bid

[cold fjord]

It failed because they went with the lowest bidder

It didn't fail because they went with the lowest bidder. This was apparently a "sole source" contract. They just added another task onto an existing contract.

Meet CGI Federal, the company behind the botched launch of HealthCare.gov

CGI's business model depends on embedding itself deeply within an institution.

"The ultimate aim is to establish relations so intimate with the client that decoupling becomes almost impossible," read one profile of the company. ...

CGI Federal's winning bid stretches back to 2007, when it was one of 16 companies to get certified on a $4 billion "indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity" contract for upgrading Medicare and Medicaid's systems. Government-Wide Acquisition Contracts — GWACs, as they're affectionately known — allow agencies to issue task orders to pre-vetted companies without going through the full procurement process, but also tend to lock out companies that didn't get on the bandwagon originally. According to USASpending.gov, CGI Federal got a total of $678 million for various services under the contract — including the $93.7 million Healthcare.gov job, which CGI Federal won over three other companies in late 2011.

It's also true that CGI Federal began lobbying as it started winning government work. According to OpenSecrets.org, it has spent $800,000 since 2006 lobbying on several different tax and appropriations bills.

Feds reviewed only one bid for Obamacare website design

Rather than open the contracting process to a competitive public solicitation with multiple bidders, officials in the Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid accepted a sole bidder, CGI Federal, the U.S. subsidiary of a Canadian company with an uneven record of IT pricing and contract performance.

CMS officials are tight-lipped about why CGI was chosen or how it happened. They also refuse to say if other firms competed with CGI, or if there was ever a public solicitation for building Healthcare.gov, the backbone of Obamacare’s problem-plagued web portal....

There is no evidence CMS issued any public solicitation for the Obamacare website contract. The Examiner asked both CMS and CGI for copies of any public solicitation notice for the Healthcare.gov task orders. Neither CMS nor CGI furnished any such public notice.....

The ID/IQ system provides a fast-track contract approval process, but it is much less likely than competitive bidding to secure high quality at a reasonable cost.

“Whenever you have limited competition, but certainly with a sole source or a one-bid offer, the government has to question whether it is going to get the best product at the best price,” said Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog organization that monitors federal contracting.

Both USAspending.gov, which tracks federal spending, and the FFATA Subaward Reporting System, which specifically tracks contracts, refer to CGI as the lone bidder for the Obamacare website design award.

Each site describes the CGI contract award as the product of “full and open competition,” but CGI is the only bidder listed.

I can't find the link at the moment, but apparently this company is "favored" within the administration.... for some reason.

Government Works are Public Domain by Law

[wilby]

Someone should file a freedom of information act request for the code.
Several years ago when I worked at NASA our branch chief speculated that someone could request, and get, the our in house developed data acquisition system and have potentially sellable product.

Re:It can't be fixed.

[erroneus]

No, people can't opt out of accidents and exposure to disease. But they should be able to make their own decision, right or wrong, to seek out health insurance or to handle their problems in their own way as they see fit. And this includes anything along the lines of religious and moral objections to current medical practices.

As for data? Gonna be hard to find now. For most people, the requirement is based on laws which are about 20 years old. (Meaning most people here don't have a full appreciation of the before-after effects of such law.) But as a person in his mid 40s, I can recall clearly how my rates changed after laws were passed and how much news there was discussing the problem in that day. I am unable to find news or other articles related to that. This is as close as I could find:

http://www.insurancejournal.com/magazines/partingshots/2000/06/26/22647.htm

The basic fact is that insurance companies have less incentive to lower rates once the requirement laws were put into place. It also shows their profitability went up following the passage of such law. Meanwhile, the amount of actual coverage went down for many people simply because they couldn't afford the newer, higher rates. And at the end of the day, it didn't curb the most frequent offenders of failure to be insured -- illegal immigrants.

Just as in the case of health insurance requirements, you only have to look at who benefits most and who is harmed the most to see what's wrong with such law and programs.

Its not the platform ...

[PPH]

... its incredibly difficult to map rules described in English to software requirements. And in this case, it isn't English, its legalese.

I've done this for engineering applications. In fact I've worked with automated systems that do a pretty good job of automated code generation. But in either the manual or automated case, it takes numerous iterations through the requirements definition phase to capture the inputs (what the customer wants), map these to requirements, discover holes (where a specific case might not be addressed) or conflicts. The solution in these cases is to go back to the customer and get more information. Or in some cases, tell them that 'it just won't work like that'.

Writing legislation, passing a bill and then building a web site doesn't work this way. What do you expect the developers to do? Go back to Congress and ask them to re-write the law if a problem is discovered? I don't think so.

Compare this to tax law. That has had decades to evolve, as a manual system before TurboTax came on the scene. And many of the discrepancies were actually encountered and solved. Just not in software. So when it came time to write code, the regulations (requirements) were well understood and complete.

False. No proof there was only 1 bidder

[kervin]

There's no proof there was only a single bid. But a spokesperson from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) told the Daily Caller, “CGI did not receive any sole source awards. They competed for the work on our multiple award contract.”

But don't let facts get in the way of your rant by all means.

Open Source rumors?

[codeusirae]

"if the rumors are to be believed, an audit found open source code in there that had simply had its licence removed"

Where are these rumors, do you have a link to the source?

Re:Open Source rumors?

[Pinhedd]

It was on /. a few days ago if I recall. Here's at least one news source

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131018/13291924928/healthcaregov-violates-open-source-license.shtml

Supposedly they bundled the software in with the other JS but stripped out the licence. Understandable given the plaintext nature of JS but still a licence violation none the less.

Re:How about just turn it off

[sumdumass]

It would be as likely that here in the US, her bill would have been $2000 or less too.

You foreigners and some liberals automatically assume that no one in the US has insurance. I can understand that assumption seeing how hard it is being pushed in order to justify socialized medicine but the fact is that over 85% of Americans already have medical coverage in some form. Out of over 313 billion people, something on the order of 15% of the population doesn't have medical insurance or coverage for medical conditions of some sort. Of those, the changes that the ACA implement will cover about half meaning that there will still be close to 7% of the population without coverage by the time it is fully implemented. The CBO says by the year 2022 it will be 30 million people.

It's funny, really, you have everybody pay a little, so your business people can fly for cheap, but ask them all to pay a little so sick people can be helped and you would think you asked them to cut off their arm or something.

You see, this isn't all about money or paying something. It isn't about helping others out who are or are not in need. This is about fundamental roles of government and it's abilities within the context of governing. I suspect it would be extremely hard for a European to understand this dilemma as even some incorrectly educated Americans can't grasp it. I will try to explain it in as rudimentary ways as I can. Don't take offense to how I do this as the over all result is what is trying to be explained.

What makes the American experience exceptional or did at one time was the fact that government was subjects of the people. In Europe and almost every single other government, the government exerts the right to exist and the people are subject to them. For instance, British citizens are subjects of the crown even if the crown doesn't have or use any real power. This is true to some degree in Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and all of the UK. In the US, we we are supposed to be citizens who constituted a government. More precisely, we are several sovereign states who surrendered portions of that sovereignty to a federal government that was constituted to provide a specific role as outlined within the US constitution. The legislative branch was divided into two sections, one representing the people directlty which has elections ever 2 years and one representing the states which originally was appointed by the state but is not elected every 6 years. The administration is supposed to be a figure head to provide a presence to foreign affairs and execute the laws of the land passed by congress while being a final check on congress with the power to obstruct congress by veto. In doing so, the government was to serve at the pleasure of the people in the roles the people constituted it for.

Now for once in American history, the people are subjects of the government and are being forced to purchase something from a third party under threat of a penalty that does not abide due process like the Constitution demands the government never remove. This is despite the fact that there is no constitutional role for the federal government to get involved with mandating healthcare coverage which is why the US Supreme Court had to rationalize it as a tax and assert the government had the right to tax but that has many problems too. For instance, what happens when the federal government who has no jurisdiction in DUI cases unless it happens on federal property decides that anyone who drinks and drives is taxed a $20,000 penalty and there is nothing you can do to object to it. What happens when the federal government who is constitutionally forbidden to bar Abortions, assess a 75% income tax penalty per year for the next 5 years to anyone who gets an abortion because they have absolute power to tax and there is no recourse around it? But more importantly, these people who are now subjects of the government are completely baffled to why the government does things against th

Re:It failed because they went with the lowest bid

[LandGator]

Was it truly lowest bidder? Anyone really check the procurement details? Or was the contract really let on the golf course? As a survivor of federal IT, I can speak to the wonders of golf course procurement by vendor-friendly management and what a mess it inevitably leads to for the poor schmos in IT who have to use the product and make it work.

Highest estimate is $300M

[kervin]

Reuters puts money spent so far at $200M, and project at $300M. Source: As Obamacare tech woes mounted, contractor payments soared

You can make your point without resorting to embellishments you know.

Re:Highest estimate is $300M

[EmperorOfCanada]

I wasn't referring to the Obamacare project specifically. I was thinking more about many government (specifically medical) software projects that have gone into over-budget orbit. A great one is the British NHS IT disaster that hit £11 Billion before it was cancelled. That is over 17 Billion USD for nothing. I have a sneaking suspicion that if the source code and other project documents got out that we would all be shaking with anger over the terrible code and development/management process that went into generating it. Yet this happens over and over.

Re: ...the ONLY bidder

[kervin]

There were 4 bidders according to Reuters.

Where did you get your information?

Re:Open source

[quantaman]

That seems like the only way to return maximum value to the taxpayers, too.

Will that un-spend 600+ million dollars?

Hard to do that when it didn't cost 600+ million dollars in the first place.

If Glenn Beck's organization is debunkinging a negative rumour about ObamaCare than it's probably false.

higher bidders don't help either

[stenvar]

It failed (like many government programs) because nobody really cares or even has to care. Sure, the government employees want to do a good job, but their livelihood doesn't depend on it. The government contractors themselves don't care either, because they'll still keep getting new contracts that they can screw up the same way as the old ones. And even if they were prevented from bidding again, they'd just change their name and go again.

Re:It failed because they went with the lowest bid

[phantomfive]

They didn't even get to start coding until this spring,

Wow, if that is true, I'm actually impressed that they got it working as well as they did by October. That's a lot of work to get done quickly.

Re:It failed because they went with the lowest bid

[Pinhedd]

supposedly it was a golf course contract of sorts. I don't know all the details, but I do know that it was not handled in a professional manner.

But according to their web site...

[EstherGretel]

"ISO-9001 certified quality frameworks that result in CGI's on-time, on-budget delivery track record"

It's a bottle neck on verification

[elbonia]

From Forbes investigation the issue is that you cannot browse the plans without entering all of your personal information for verification first. The system then needs to cross check all of the info to calculate your government subsides. This causes a major bottleneck which greatly slows down the system. Most would balk at the prices without the subsides.

Quote from the article: So, by analyzing your income first, if you qualify for heavy subsidies, the website can advertise those subsidies to you instead of just hitting you with Obamacare’s steep premiums. For example, the site could advertise plans that cost “$0 or “$30 instead of explaining that the plan really costs $200, and that you’re getting a subsidy of $200 or $170.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/10/14/obamacares-website-is-crashing-because-it-doesnt-want-you-to-know-health-plans-true-costs/

Re:It's a bottle neck on verification

[the eric conspiracy]

If Forbes (or anyone else) is saying that they are incompetent boobs.

Healthcare.gov provides a way to browse the plans without creating an account.

https://www.healthcare.gov/health-plan-information/

Oops.

Re:It failed because they went with the lowest bid

[tyrione]

Most people have no background in Engineering Economics which has long shown the best of breed solution has the highest up front cost, with the lowest long-term costs, due to having the lowest MAINTENANCE costs. Roadways are a great example of how low bid doesn't improve the infrastructure. Best of breed is the only solution.

Washington will never go for it.

[dtmancom]

Free, open source software reduces the opportunity for graft. You don't think 100% of the money DC spends is honest, do you? Or even 50%?

Re:It failed because they went with the lowest bid

[duppyconqueror]

was not subject to the rigorous testing regime demanded by a national service....not a patch for unskilled developers or a crutch for incompetent project managers who are unable to keep the project on track and within scope.

I worked for CGI Federal for a few years, and this describes the environment to a T.

The contractors building Obamacare ..

[codeusirae]

"an examination by the Sunlight Foundation shows the administration turned the task of building its futuristic new health care technology planning and programming over to legacy contractors with deep political pockets .. Sunlight reviewed contract award information from USASpending.gov and FedBizOpps.gov, and found 47 organizations that won contracts from Health and Human Services or the Treasury Department to manage, support or service the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Among them were top contractors like Northrop Grumman, Deloitte LLP, SAIC Inc. General Dynamics and Booz Allen Hamilton." link

Re:The contractors building Obamacare ..

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

" Among them were top contractors like Northrop Grumman, Deloitte LLP, SAIC Inc. General Dynamics and Booz Allen Hamilton."

It makes me so comfortable to know that it was possible that Eric Snowden would have had access to my data.

The 60's Version of ACA

[yek]

Would have been a fat white dude knocking on your door, briefly regaling you with tales of anvils, pianos and frogs falling on your head, your daughter being gang-raped while your wife was beheaded. You know, typical insurance agent talk, and then he'd tell you it would cost you from 2 bucks/mo. -> 20/mo and shove a couple of War & Peace sized pamphlets in your meaty fist.

You'd slam back some JD, have a 24 oz. rare steak, talk to the missus about it, and then you'd dump your six times as expensive insurance and the fat dude would do all the work after you'd signed on the dotted line. Internet my ass jugalo..

It would have been the perfect deal (completely without any computers/internet). Thinking of that as a starting point and caca like Facebook and Twitter, Windows, MacOS , even Linux, and well, it becomes kind of obvious that computers ain't your friend and neither is the internet. For posting bullshit like this, however, it is great!

Not difficult to fix, eliminate politics

[VTEngineer]

Stop trying to validate everyone prior to purchase. Let’s call it roughly 1 million simultaneous visitors. Your bottle necks are in the multiple back-end databases that must be accessed to validate identity and eligibility. Why put the bottleneck first? Show visitors prices for various classifications. Ask them to self select their category, show them their prices. Validate their identity and eligibility after they have committed to purchase, if they selected incorrectly, tell them at that point and return to home page. Simple. This really isn't that difficult unless your agenda is to gather information for political purposes. As a professional programmer, postpone the long running operation until the smaller number of buyers elects. Every visitor will not buy on first visit. It takes a few trips. Allow those visits to not require a real back-end round trip. Give them a wizard to self select and validate on purchase. Takes load off of back-end databases. Speeds response times. Sacrifices nothing other then knowing your visitors prior to purchase. Why is that important? Yeah, good question.

Re:How about just turn it off

[asaul]

The only reason people are being forced to buy insurance is because there is no way in the US model of government that true universal tax payer funded health care would ever get up with Republican opposition. Take a look at Australia or the UK - universal tax payer funded healthcare. None of that is tied into taxing people for abortions and the government would by lynched by the people should such a move ever be attempted. In Australia everyone pays - you can go to a public hospital or see a doctor and it will cost you nothing, many medicines are subsidised, and in general services are decent. You can buy private insurance and go to better hospitals if you wish - if you have high income and don't have private insurance you pay a levy - but most people in that bracket have private cover anyway.

The difference being our elections tend to matter - in Australia (while not perfect) the gerrymandering of representative seats is not easily done. Typically it is managed by the electoral commission so its hard for political influence to simply keep changing seat boundaries to suit the sitting member. That means come election time a poor performing or unpopular government has a real risk of being unseated. Our election cycle reflects that - poor performance is punished so the parties toe enough of the line to stay in power - but once they become to arrogant they get kicked out.

Nothing about universal health cover is about governments taking away freedoms. Its about using the power of numbers to deliver the basic services everyone will need at some point in their life. Sure there are inefficiencies, waste, bun fights over proper funding etc but in the end its something a government should be providing. If you leave it up to the free market well you have the existing US system which from what I understand has costs far in excess of the same services anywhere else in the world simply because there is money to be made.

Re:It can't be fixed.

[the eric conspiracy]

I guess you haven't read the Fugitive Slave Act. Or the 18th Amendment. Or the Kansas Nebraska Act.

That last one was a doozy and is my favorite for worst US Law ever.

Re:How about just turn it off

[sumdumass]

The only reason people are being forced to buy insurance is because there is no way in the US model of government that true universal tax payer funded health care would ever get up with Republican opposition.

Actually, there is no way it will happen without a constitutional amendment allowing them to do so. Republican opposition is not the problem, people ignoring it or trying to get around it is the real problem.

None of that is tied into taxing people for abortions and the government would by lynched by the people should such a move ever be attempted. In Australia everyone pays - you can go to a public hospital or see a doctor and it will cost you nothing, many medicines are subsidised, and in general services are decent. You can buy private insurance and go to better hospitals if you wish - if you have high income and don't have private insurance you pay a levy - but most people in that bracket have private cover anyway.

And like I mentioned in my other post, in Australia and the UK the people are subjects of the crown or government, not the other way around which is how it is supposed to be in the US. The US federal government is not in any way, the same as the government in the UK or Australia.

The difference being our elections tend to matter - in Australia (while not perfect) the gerrymandering of representative seats is not easily done. Typically it is managed by the electoral commission so its hard for political influence to simply keep changing seat boundaries to suit the sitting member. That means come election time a poor performing or unpopular government has a real risk of being unseated. Our election cycle reflects that - poor performance is punished so the parties toe enough of the line to stay in power - but once they become to arrogant they get kicked out.

Again, a difference in government. The US constitution leaves this to the states. It can happen the way you suggest but would take a constitutional amendment. In the US, most of the stuff like healthcare is supposed to belong in the prevue of the states not the federal government. That is what foreigners as well as many ignorant citizens fail to grasp about the US government system. The US government is not an all encompassing government that does anything it wants. It is limited by the constitution not only in the bill of rights, but the make up and legislative powers of the government itself. Take something like Murder for instance. It is against the law on a federal level but the US federal government has no jurisdiction unless it crosses state lines, happens on federal property or to a federal employee, or happens outside the country to a citizen of the US. Unless that happens, only the state can prosecute for a violation of the murder law. A recent event in the US that you might have heard about is the George Zimmerman case in which a guy shot and killed a kid he was following after the kid proceeded to kick his ass. Only the state could prosecute Zimmerman and all the federal pressure and involvement in the case could do is pressure the state to prosecute after they decided not to. This is representative of the limits the federal government has constitutionally. Even with the Obamacare law or the PPACE law, the US supreme court had to construe the fine or penalty for not participating as a tax in order to find it was constitutional. Of course there are serious problems with that too.

Nothing about universal health cover is about governments taking away freedoms. Its about using the power of numbers to deliver the basic services everyone will need at some point in their life. Sure there are inefficiencies, waste, bun fights over proper funding etc but in the end its something a government should be providing. If you leave it up to the free market well you have the existing US system which from what I understand has costs far in excess of the same services anywhere else in the world s

they should change it to healthcare.onion

[InPursuitOfTruth]

If they sold it on silk road, and they accepted BTC as payment, then it would have a chance.

Re: ...the ONLY bidder

[Microlith]

Possibly here:

patriotsheartnetwork: Feds reviewed only one bid for Obamacare website design

It was the first result for 'healthcare.gov "task order"'.

Caveat being that of the first 10 results, 3 are unrelated and the rest seem be right-wing.

Re:How about just turn it off

[Microlith]

Actually, there is no way it will happen without a constitutional amendment allowing them to do so.

Well, we can worry about that when we get around to dismantling the armed forces. You know, since we're not at war and having a standing army is unconstitutional too.

Republican opposition is not the problem, people ignoring it or trying to get around it is the real problem.

I don't believe for a moment that their stand is so principled.

The excess costs are substantially the result of the federal government being involved in it too.

When making these claims would you do us all a favor and provide something, anything credible that supports it? Can you?

I object to the utter transformation of the US federal government without regard to the constitution that forces it to be subject of the people.

Then healthcare is the least of your concerns.

Re:It can't be fixed.

[Microlith]

Holy shit you provided a logical argument and a link to data to back it up, even if it's only one. I need to save a link to your post as a reference to point others to.

Re:How about just turn it off

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Are you seriously saying that a system which enables people to buy private health insurance from competing private companies, the benefits from which will be spent with doctors in private practice and with for-profit hospitals, is "socialized medicine"?

Words have meanings.

Obama to address health care website

[elbonia]

"President Barack Obama on Monday will talk about the website glitches that have plagued the application process for health care insurance since the new exchanges opened up this month."

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/10/20/as-gop-hits-at-obamacare-site-administration-vows-fixes/?hpt=hp_t1

Buy It

[sycodon]

Just buy the source to an existing and functional high volume on line site. Product is product whether it's Insurance or computers. Hell, buy Geico's site. All the security is built in, a product model, etc. All you have to do is modify to fit the new product.

But noooo...Government always has to reinvent the wheel.

Re:Buy It

[sycodon]

I must have missed the part where I suggested they should be forced to sell. Nope, can't see it anywhere. Are you sure you weren't responding to a different post...on a different site? Because what you wrote has shit to do with what I wrote.

Re:Buy It

[kmoser]

Just buy the source to an existing and functional high volume on line site. Product is product whether it's Insurance or computers. Hell, buy Geico's site. All the security is built in, a product model, etc. All you have to do is modify to fit the new product.

Why buy anything when the NSA has the ability to hack their servers and get the source for free?

"you say...

[globaljustin]

'I only hear what I want to...'

"

I'll let Lisa Loeb take it from here ;)

Re:"you say...

[phantomfive]

The point I was trying to make, which apparently I didn't make clearly enough, is that if project management makes such a horrible, obvious error like starting testing a week before release, then it's almost guaranteed that they made many other less obvious mistakes along the way. Even if they somehow managed to avoid that, a week of testing is not enough time to find and fix all the bugs from a year of programming, so they most natural result is that your release will be buggy and miserable.

Re:False. No proof there was only 1 bidder

[Karmashock]

you have links?... so do I...
http://washingtonexaminer.com/feds-reviewed-only-one-bid-for-obamacare-website-design/article/2537194

And really given what a joke the roll out was do you HONESTLY think using your ACTUAL HUMAN brain that they had an open bid on this?

Can you for a second bypass the partisan rot and think about this as if it weren't something you're horrifically biased about? TRY. Consider what you know and try to defend how this has played out.

What is more, who bid on it? If multiple companies bid... who were they? The government won't say. You have to submit a freedom of information act request to get that information and of course the government will basically drag their feet on that until they can fake up an answer.

How many of these scandals do we need to go through before you finally understand they're dirty. We're dealing with fundamentally corrupt people here. It can't be explained with incompetence. Its too systematic and methodical. Its corruption. And people like you let them get away with it.

Re: How To FIx Healthcare.gov: Go Open-Source!

[MobSwatter]

Obama mentioned open source early on, but you know how things go when you promise change and change your promise. Presidency is a broken record, and they have long since lost the hearts and minds of the voter, is likely why they opted for corporate backing in the 80's and 90's. Now we the people are just bitches.

All government projects should be open source

[davydagger]

We the people pay for this shit via tax dollars, I for one am sick of the US Government treating public stuff as its own private property.

In addition, we need to bring back the concept of "public" property. I think this is where most of the backlash against the government, and government property lies. The US Government treats what should be public property, as Private Government property.

Open Source and American Workers

[Ronin Developer]

Perhaps, hiring people who have a vested interest in the ACA succeeding, let's say the American people, to do the work might have made some sense. Outsourcing the work, using, obsolete, 12 year old technology and having people who don't give a damn if it works so long as they get paid is a sure recipe for disaster.

If Obama wanted an opportunity to create jobs - especially, in an industry where the average IT worker has seen a 4% wage increase over the past 10 years, he should have found all the out of work IT workers whose jobs have been sent overseas and and hired them - at least to design the systems. Coding can be be done by any competent code monkey (domestic or foreign) if the specs are right and QA is implemented and followed.

We wouldn't see the issues we are seeing now had this been done. Oh wait....who hired the contractors????? Anybody know?

Re:It failed because they went with the lowest bid

[snsh]

"Best of breed" for software development works the opposite way. The "magic quadrant" solutions touted by Forrester and Gartner tend to be associated with companies presenting the most polished sales staff selling solutions that meet the most checkboxes with the flashiest demos. "All you do is click apply, and it's done!" Problem with those "best of breed" vendors is that instead of delivering a tight package of software that does a few things well, they give you a toppling stack of software that does tons of stuff poorly. They charge a lot to license, charge a lot to implement, and charge even more to support.

Re:How about just turn it off

[EzInKy]

Out of over 313 billion people...

Seems I recall the whole planet just passed the 7 billion mark, typo?

What makes the American experience exceptional or did at one time was the fact that government was subjects of the people.

And when the people say that everybody has a right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"...you are 100% willing to make sure that they actually do?

Magical Fairy Formula

[Lemmeoutada Collecti]

P = Population of the United States over the age of 18
H = Number of households

Givens:
All members of P will require information from the site.
Open enrollment for most company health plans is from Oct 1 - Oct 15.

Therefore:
Most members of P who need to compare to company health plans will need to access the site between when it opens - Oct 1 - and the deadline for open enrollment in their company plan - Oct 15.
Assuming 80% of P is in the above category:
L = (P - H) * 0.8

Using data from census.gov:
P=~240,133,500
H=~114,761,359
L= (240133500-114761359) *.8
L=125372141 * .8=100,297,712 users
Multiple by number of clicks/page loads to accomplish the basic tasks and you have a number of approximate hits. From what I have seen of the site, that is approximately 20 page loads.
So 2,005,954,240 hits / 15 days / 24 hours per day / 60 minutes per hour / 60 seconds per minute = ~1548 hits per second minimum capacity required.
If we further assume that the initial surge will be more than 1/15 of the population, then that number can be scaled appropriately.

It's not black magic.

They can mess up anything

[whizbang77045]

I have faith. The government could screw even open source up.

Re:They can mess up anything

[Viewsonic]

The Government is Soylent Green. You can mess up anything.

HELLO Ted Cruz.

[Viewsonic]

I really love the "How about this - why don't we do something deliberately, in a planned fashion, that has wide support in society?" quote. Half the country wants to cover everyone, and doesn't think money should be a consideration when it comes to health care. The other 50% think people should simply DIE if they get sick. Period. There is NO "wide support" for either side, and there NEVER WILL BE. Until the other half the population quits screaming about every stupid event of the day, and actually decides to show some compassion towards the poor and unfortunate, this will NEVER HAPPEN.

So then we have this: "How about we just don't throw crap to say we did something?" Which is EXACTLY what happens when you have people screaming and not working together. This is what you get. It's the ONLY way to move forward at this point.

Welcome to America, bud.

i agree

[globaljustin]

right...i agreed w/ you when you said that 3 steps back up the tree

my GP point...waaay back up there...was that Obamacare website's problems are **routine problems** solved by IT engineers everyday

somehow, you think your point about their mistake in testing (which you yourself say is an "obvious error") is in conflict with, or a counterpoint to my point waaay back about Obamacare's problems being routine IT problems

you seem willing to continue to engage on the topic but i don't see how I can if all you do is say something similar to my point as if it is a counterpoint

Re:i agree

[phantomfive]

Maybe I misread you.....you seemed to be saying that all they need is extra servers. That is unlikely to be the case.

Re:How about just turn it off

[sumdumass]

Well, we can worry about that when we get around to dismantling the armed forces. You know, since we're not at war and having a standing army is unconstitutional too.

What in the hell are you talking about? We can constitutionally have a standing army as long as congress funds it. We had a standing army all through the entire history of the US. Thomas Jefferson, one of the authors of the US constitution, created a standing navy and the marines when he became president..

I don't believe for a moment that their stand is so principled.

Then you are purposely ignorant. Don't you remember all the outcry about it being unconstitutional, all the lawsuits about it that eventually went to the supreme court who found part of it to be unconstitutional and then reinterpreted the penalty to be a fine in order to fake it's constitutionality? How old are you, this crap i recent.

When making these claims would you do us all a favor and provide something, anything credible that supports it? Can you?

http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4345611&cid=45150107

Look at that link. I wrote it a few days ago on my phone but it is usable.

Then healthcare is the least of your concerns.

My electric bill is also the least of my concerns yet I won't ignore it either. We are talking about this one issue because it is the one issue we are talking about- not because there are no others. I could write enough on what's wrong with the government that shouldn't be that your eyes will gouge themselves out just to have a reason for bleeding.

check the headline

[globaljustin]

routine IT work

that was the headline of the GP post to which you refer...

but indeed, I agree you probably just misread it

Re:check the headline

[phantomfive]

I don't know what you meant by this then: "So, the real analysis is that the ACA needs more servers."

check the headline still

[globaljustin]

what I meant by that is, 1. taking a general, greater point that you agree with and 2. finding one sentence that, when isolated from its context away from the rest of the post can be pedantically criticized, and then 3. making posts that seem to be making counterpoints to the general, greater point of the GP (which you agree with) but 4. only citing one isolated, contextless sentence is confusing and not adding value to the discussion

Re:How about just turn it off

[sumdumass]

I can see why you didn't log in. The ACA passed the house without a single republican voting for it. It passed the senate without a single republican voting for it. Part of it was found unconstitutional and the court changed another part (declared the penalty a tax in order to find it constitutional) of the law in order to find it constitutional.

The rest of your post is rubish with you assuming crap that wasn't said. Perhaps you have a guilty concience or something.

Re:How about just turn it off

[sumdumass]

Yes, the billion should be million.

As for the life liberty and the pursuit of happyness, why would you suggest i guarente it 100%? It is in the declaratiob of independence which was a document signifying our separation from the king. Are you expecting people to rebel agaist the US or something? I know there are a lot of people who think a civil war is appropriate, but i'm not onr of them quite yet.

Re:How about just turn it off

[sumdumass]

The thing is, i'm not being asked at all. I'm being told you do x or you get fined with no due process because we are callung it a tax now.

I would much rather what you said to be true, where it was optional because i was asked and not ordered. Baring that, i think it would have been much better to either expand the medicaid/medicare system to offer coverage to those that truely cannot afford it (verses those who would rather buy a new boat instead of maintaining health insurance) ot incorporatr it withing the VA system somehow.

There are loads of ways this could be less offensive.

Re:How about just turn it off

[sumdumass]

Ffs. Im postimg from my phonr and it seemd to reject all my corrections when i hit submit

Well, most anyway.

They ARE running Open Source GPL V2! (Pirated DB!)

[linuxiac]

The Healthcare.Gov DataBase is LICENSED under GPL v2 by Spry Media, but, after the PIRACY, CGI wiped off the acknowledgement! There's lots more about it all! Like, Hiring Mainframe folks INSTEAD of website developers and a few good proper programmers! You wouldn't think they needed so much money, as not to hire a few good folk! Contracted at $83.4 Million, can't imagine contractors couldn't do it for anything less than $634 Million! Apple spent $1.5 M for the iPhone 5...