6 ms·

How is this on topic? healthcare.gov has been plagued with technical difficulties from the start, well before the current administration.

samfisher83 9y ago
It says this in the article: >As part of its mission to translate the false narrative that the Affordable Care Act is failing into reality, Tom Price’s Health and Human Services Department has already announced massive cuts to the navigator programs that fund Obamacare outreach, as well as the budget for ads that alert Americans to the existence of the open-enrollment period. It just seems like a strange coincidence they need to shutdown the site during open enrollment.
- heartbreak 9y ago
  Maybe free bad press is how they plan to get the word out.
dannyr 9y ago
There technical difficulties at the start but it has long been sorted out. See https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/the-secret-startup-saved-healthcare-gov-the-worst-website-in-america/397784/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/the-s...
untog 9y ago
It's a valid complaint. The site's technical issues have been fixed for a long time. As the article says: given the administration’s previous efforts to sabotage the insurance markets, it’s not paranoid to view this maintenance schedule as a plan to keep down enrollment We're all technical folks here. What possible reason could there be to close the site every Sunday morning for 12 hours? In what situation would that ever be the best answer for users?
- MichaelBurge 9y ago
  > We're all technical folks here. What possible reason could there be to close the site every Sunday morning for 12 hours? In what situation would that ever be the best answer for users? Database compaction?
  - drodgers 9y ago
    What? No. You just bring-up a replica, compact that (or do any other slow operation you want), wait for it to catch-up, then fail-over, making the replica the new master. There's no excuse for doing slow, blocking maintenance operations on a live user-facing database.
    - chimeracoder 9y ago
      > There's no excuse for doing slow, blocking maintenance operations on a live user-facing database. You can't judge a government system against the best-of-class standards of the private sector (note that I did not say the typical standards, just the top-of-line). Government systems are rarely built or staffed by the top talent, often outsourced to lowest-bid contractors, and may not even have people on call for issues. It's not unusual for government sites to be scheduled to function only during standard business hours. So yeah, it sucks that this site is going to be down during some of the least likely times for people to use it (midnight to noon on Sunday), but that's not at all unusual for government sites.
      - dbbk 9y ago
        > Government systems are rarely built or staffed by the top talent, often outsourced to lowest-bid contractors, and may not even have people on call for issues. It's not unusual for government sites to be scheduled to function only during standard business hours. Except that's not what happened, the Obama administration set up The US Digital Service to fix Healthcare.gov and specifically staffed it with top talent. https://www.usds.gov/ https://www.usds.gov/
      - throwaway5752 9y ago
lostcolony 9y ago
Planned maintenance at varying times, on varying dates, might be reasonable. Planned maintenance every Sunday (i.e., the weekend day that the largest number of people have off, and which would be the hardest off time to staff up for for planned maintenance), a little less so.
- strictnein 9y ago
  Wait, now we're complaining that the government is doing maintenance of some type outside of normal working hours? Talk about damned if you do, damned if you don't.
  - tacomonstrous 9y ago
    A 12 hour maintenance break every week sounds a bit unlikely to be absolutely necessary.
  - lostcolony 9y ago
    "Unexpected maintenance" outside of normal working hours = good on you. "Expected (planned) maintenance" outside of normal working hours, and during expected high volumes of usage = WTF.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
0xfeba 9y ago
Yes, but they were largely fixed after 2015. From the article: > No explanation was given for the outages, but given the administration’s previous efforts to sabotage the insurance markets, it’s not paranoid to view this maintenance schedule as a plan to keep down enrollment. At a minimum, it displays an indifference to the needs of the population it is supposed to be serving.

samfisher83 9y ago

It says this in the article: >As part of its mission to translate the false narrative that the Affordable Care Act is failing into reality, Tom Price’s Health and Human Services Department has already announced massive cuts to the navigator programs that fund Obamacare outreach, as well as the budget for ads that alert Americans to the existence of the open-enrollment period. It just seems like a strange coincidence they need to shutdown the site during open enrollment.

heartbreak 9y ago
Maybe free bad press is how they plan to get the word out.

dannyr 9y ago

There technical difficulties at the start but it has long been sorted out. See https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/the-secret-startup-saved-healthcare-gov-the-worst-website-in-america/397784/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/the-s...

untog 9y ago

It's a valid complaint. The site's technical issues have been fixed for a long time. As the article says: given the administration’s previous efforts to sabotage the insurance markets, it’s not paranoid to view this maintenance schedule as a plan to keep down enrollment We're all technical folks here. What possible reason could there be to close the site every Sunday morning for 12 hours? In what situation would that ever be the best answer for users?

MichaelBurge 9y ago
> We're all technical folks here. What possible reason could there be to close the site every Sunday morning for 12 hours? In what situation would that ever be the best answer for users? Database compaction?
- drodgers 9y ago
  What? No. You just bring-up a replica, compact that (or do any other slow operation you want), wait for it to catch-up, then fail-over, making the replica the new master. There's no excuse for doing slow, blocking maintenance operations on a live user-facing database.
  - chimeracoder 9y ago
    > There's no excuse for doing slow, blocking maintenance operations on a live user-facing database. You can't judge a government system against the best-of-class standards of the private sector (note that I did not say the typical standards, just the top-of-line). Government systems are rarely built or staffed by the top talent, often outsourced to lowest-bid contractors, and may not even have people on call for issues. It's not unusual for government sites to be scheduled to function only during standard business hours. So yeah, it sucks that this site is going to be down during some of the least likely times for people to use it (midnight to noon on Sunday), but that's not at all unusual for government sites.
    - dbbk 9y ago
      > Government systems are rarely built or staffed by the top talent, often outsourced to lowest-bid contractors, and may not even have people on call for issues. It's not unusual for government sites to be scheduled to function only during standard business hours. Except that's not what happened, the Obama administration set up The US Digital Service to fix Healthcare.gov and specifically staffed it with top talent. https://www.usds.gov/ https://www.usds.gov/
    - throwaway5752 9y ago

lostcolony 9y ago

Planned maintenance at varying times, on varying dates, might be reasonable. Planned maintenance every Sunday (i.e., the weekend day that the largest number of people have off, and which would be the hardest off time to staff up for for planned maintenance), a little less so.

strictnein 9y ago
Wait, now we're complaining that the government is doing maintenance of some type outside of normal working hours? Talk about damned if you do, damned if you don't.
- tacomonstrous 9y ago
  A 12 hour maintenance break every week sounds a bit unlikely to be absolutely necessary.
- lostcolony 9y ago
  "Unexpected maintenance" outside of normal working hours = good on you. "Expected (planned) maintenance" outside of normal working hours, and during expected high volumes of usage = WTF.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

0xfeba 9y ago

Yes, but they were largely fixed after 2015. From the article: > No explanation was given for the outages, but given the administration’s previous efforts to sabotage the insurance markets, it’s not paranoid to view this maintenance schedule as a plan to keep down enrollment. At a minimum, it displays an indifference to the needs of the population it is supposed to be serving.