Starting in 2009, the Government's data strategy has emphasized data interoperability across organizations. MarkLogic has a fine product that optimizes XML communications between and among organizations. Because the public sites' data stores would be transmitted among the states' repositories, it's easy to see that data strategy would center on exchanges in the chosen lingua franca.
Contrary to many of the posts here, I will not take issue with XML. Using it is complex, and it requires verbose communications, certainly - but the real issue with the healthcare.gov fiasco was too many moving parts. I have never seen a fully functional XML capture-and-exchange DB, but I have seen several long, drawn-out projects that sought to produce such a DB as their end product. For a mission-critical system such as healthcare.gov, they should have built two prototypes, one with XML architecture as the to-be model, and the other with a functional architecture that could evolve into an XML structure - but engineered for risk reduction. The real problem here was ineffective risk management, and the ship just kept running toward the rocks while the helmsman held the wheel steady.
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Starting in 2009, the Government's data strategy has emphasized data interoperability across organizations. MarkLogic has a fine product that optimizes XML communications between and among organizations. Because the public sites' data stores would be transmitted among the states' repositories, it's easy to see that data strategy would center on exchanges in the chosen lingua franca. Contrary to many of the posts here, I will not take issue with XML. Using it is complex, and it requires verbose communications, certainly - but the real issue with the healthcare.gov fiasco was too many moving parts. I have never seen a fully functional XML capture-and-exchange DB, but I have seen several long, drawn-out projects that sought to produce such a DB as their end product. For a mission-critical system such as healthcare.gov, they should have built two prototypes, one with XML architecture as the to-be model, and the other with a functional architecture that could evolve into an XML structure - but engineered for risk reduction. The real problem here was ineffective risk management, and the ship just kept running toward the rocks while the helmsman held the wheel steady.