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> 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-cla

> 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
Can I just make a guess that you don't know anything about the Healthcare.gov infrastructure? It was extremely widely reported at the time how the Obama administration fired the first contractor (CGI Federal) for lack of quality, and how a number of people from the private sector came in to design it (sometimes at far below market rates). Anyway, you're are making general platitudes about "government systems" without regard for the level, department, or any other factor that would influence the quality. And you think, "not unusual for government sites to be scheduled to function only during standard business hours". It would be a genuine shock to anyone knowledgeable about these sort of things if this were truly technically necessary.
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > Can I just make a guess that you don't know anything about the Healthcare.gov infrastructure? You can, but you couldn't be further from the truth. > Anyway, you're are making general platitudes about "government systems" without regard for the level, department, or any other factor that would influence the quality. I guess, but that's not really relevant to my point, which is to refute the statement "There's no excuse for doing slow, blocking maintenance operations on a live user-facing database.". There is an excuse in government systems for this. You may not like it, and you may think it's an excuse that they should avoid, but that's one reason, and these sorts of issues are pretty common in government systems. You're correct that healthcare.gov is actually one of the better-functioning sites in that regard, but even if some aspects of it mitigate the shortcomings, that doesn't mean it's not subject to some of the other same limitations. > It would be a genuine shock to anyone knowledgeable about these sort of things if this were truly technically necessary. I'm emphasizing that what people on HN think of as "necessary" is different from what the government thinks of as "necessary". The example that I gave was that, if you don't have anyone on-call after hours (which is incredibly common), it makes sense to keep an important system offline during those hours, rather than risk a silent failure.
  - deleted 9y ago
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  - throwaway5752 9y ago
    Eh, not to metacomment but I upvoted you. I don't know why you were downvoted. What about the healthcare.gov website do you know that would require this sort of downtime window, when it didn't require it in prior years? When I say knowledgeable about these things, I mean these contracted, designed-to-spec, CMMI level 5 projects. Even one of those would be unlikely to require this sort of maintenance. Again, open to correct if you can offer specifics.

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

Can I just make a guess that you don't know anything about the Healthcare.gov infrastructure? It was extremely widely reported at the time how the Obama administration fired the first contractor (CGI Federal) for lack of quality, and how a number of people from the private sector came in to design it (sometimes at far below market rates). Anyway, you're are making general platitudes about "government systems" without regard for the level, department, or any other factor that would influence the quality. And you think, "not unusual for government sites to be scheduled to function only during standard business hours". It would be a genuine shock to anyone knowledgeable about these sort of things if this were truly technically necessary.

chimeracoder 9y ago
> Can I just make a guess that you don't know anything about the Healthcare.gov infrastructure? You can, but you couldn't be further from the truth. > Anyway, you're are making general platitudes about "government systems" without regard for the level, department, or any other factor that would influence the quality. I guess, but that's not really relevant to my point, which is to refute the statement "There's no excuse for doing slow, blocking maintenance operations on a live user-facing database.". There is an excuse in government systems for this. You may not like it, and you may think it's an excuse that they should avoid, but that's one reason, and these sorts of issues are pretty common in government systems. You're correct that healthcare.gov is actually one of the better-functioning sites in that regard, but even if some aspects of it mitigate the shortcomings, that doesn't mean it's not subject to some of the other same limitations. > It would be a genuine shock to anyone knowledgeable about these sort of things if this were truly technically necessary. I'm emphasizing that what people on HN think of as "necessary" is different from what the government thinks of as "necessary". The example that I gave was that, if you don't have anyone on-call after hours (which is incredibly common), it makes sense to keep an important system offline during those hours, rather than risk a silent failure.
- deleted 9y ago
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- throwaway5752 9y ago
  Eh, not to metacomment but I upvoted you. I don't know why you were downvoted. What about the healthcare.gov website do you know that would require this sort of downtime window, when it didn't require it in prior years? When I say knowledgeable about these things, I mean these contracted, designed-to-spec, CMMI level 5 projects. Even one of those would be unlikely to require this sort of maintenance. Again, open to correct if you can offer specifics.