4 ms·

Healthcare.gov was farmed out to well-connected contractors, much like most other similar boondoggles (SLS, F-34, Bradley fighting vehicle, delayed road project

by mjhay 4y ago

Healthcare.gov was farmed out to well-connected contractors, much like most other similar boondoggles (SLS, F-34, Bradley fighting vehicle, delayed road projects, etc). It says a lot more about corrupt and inefficient procurement (e.g. cost-plus) than it does about rank-and-file government employees. Using many contractors in many different congressional districts, all of whom have little incentive to deliver on time and on budget, or cooperate effectively with each other.

crooked-v 4y ago
I feel it still says something about government employees because one can pretty much take it as a given that the standard employee pool is basically incapable of building relatively basic e-commerce websites.
- medellin 4y ago
  Being someone who just happened into a government job for my first one out of college that holds true in my experience. No good employee stayed in the job more than two years and most only one before they got so sick of the politics and bike shedding. The government gets good employees it just loses them all very quickly when it fails to compensate them as well as provide them with meaningful work.
- mjhay 4y ago
  Well yeah, what do you expect when Congress and the GSA sets pay for pay for developers at levels far below the private sector? I've worked for two different federal agencies in the past, and both were more efficient and lower BS than most private-sector jobs I've worked at. This wasn't IT or development, of course. It's just taken as a truism that government is always inefficient and bureaucratic, but the average ossified corporation such as Google is wildly inefficient and bureaucratic just the same. They also aren't necessarily that bad to interact with. I'd much rather go to the DMV than interact with Comcast.
- giaour 4y ago
  The standard government employee is a project manager whose main job is overseeing contractor work. Funding cycles make it nearly impossible to hire in house staff to actually do work, and there is firm political opposition to the federal government doing anything on its own.
  - mjhay 4y ago
    I've known some people who did contract work for the DoD like how you describe. They reported to DoD employees and were otherwise indistinguishable from actual DoD employes. However, there was some company that did their W2s, and took a cut almost as large as their salaries.
gamegoblin 4y ago
Fundamentally you're talking about the problem I alluded to in the 3rd point: Software projects work best with a single (or small group of closely knit) decision-makers at the top who bear ultimate responsibility for the implementation of the project. The problem with governmental design-by-committee is that it spreads out the responsibility such that the failure of the project does not fall on any individual or small group. The lack of concentrated responsibility breeds an environment that incentivizes grift rather than delivering value. If the iPhone bombed, it was going to be Steve Jobs' fault. He had final say in all design decisions. If Healthcare.gov bombed... whose head rolled? Excerpt from the wiki article of Todd Park, CTO in the Obama administration: ''' The initial version of HealthCare.gov, which was deployed on July 1, 2010, was built in 90 days by Park and his team at HHS. The first HealthCare.gov was cited by the Kaiser Family Foundation as one of the early highlights in the implementation of the healthcare reform implementation progress. HealthCare.gov was also the first website ever "demoed" by a sitting president The following two versions, from the relaunch of the front end in May 2013 to the badly flawed marketplace that went live in October 2013, were developed by contractors and overseen by officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, outside of his purview within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. When the extent of the problems with Healthcare.gov became clear, Park was tasked by President Obama to work on a "trauma team" that addressed the "technological disaster". Park, along with Jeffrey Zients, led the "tech surge" that ultimately repaired Healthcare.gov over the winter, eventually fixing the marketplace sufficiently to enable millions of Americans to find plans and purchase health insurance. ''' How many of those unnamed officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services got fired for a multi-billion dollar boondoggle? The reason bureaucracies (both government and private) love process, documentation, committees, etc., is because the primary goal of any bureaucracy, far and above its nominal mission, is to continue existing, and a primary part of continuing to exist is to avoid blame for anything. Delegating decision making to committees and process is a key way to avoid blame. "Who is responsible for this mess?" "Nobody is responsible, we followed the process. But don't worry, we've started the process of forming a committee to update our process manual to prevent this mess in the future."
- somesortofthing 4y ago
  > If Healthcare.gov bombed... whose head rolled? Is your claim here that corporations are able to correctly assign responsibility for major failures? Why do you think this? There are so many ways to deflect blame for your failures onto others while taking full credit for successes you had nothing to do with in the private sector.

by mjhay 4y ago

crooked-v 4y ago

I feel it still says something about government employees because one can pretty much take it as a given that the standard employee pool is basically incapable of building relatively basic e-commerce websites.

medellin 4y ago
Being someone who just happened into a government job for my first one out of college that holds true in my experience. No good employee stayed in the job more than two years and most only one before they got so sick of the politics and bike shedding. The government gets good employees it just loses them all very quickly when it fails to compensate them as well as provide them with meaningful work.
mjhay 4y ago
Well yeah, what do you expect when Congress and the GSA sets pay for pay for developers at levels far below the private sector? I've worked for two different federal agencies in the past, and both were more efficient and lower BS than most private-sector jobs I've worked at. This wasn't IT or development, of course. It's just taken as a truism that government is always inefficient and bureaucratic, but the average ossified corporation such as Google is wildly inefficient and bureaucratic just the same. They also aren't necessarily that bad to interact with. I'd much rather go to the DMV than interact with Comcast.
giaour 4y ago
The standard government employee is a project manager whose main job is overseeing contractor work. Funding cycles make it nearly impossible to hire in house staff to actually do work, and there is firm political opposition to the federal government doing anything on its own.
- mjhay 4y ago
  I've known some people who did contract work for the DoD like how you describe. They reported to DoD employees and were otherwise indistinguishable from actual DoD employes. However, there was some company that did their W2s, and took a cut almost as large as their salaries.

gamegoblin 4y ago

Fundamentally you're talking about the problem I alluded to in the 3rd point: Software projects work best with a single (or small group of closely knit) decision-makers at the top who bear ultimate responsibility for the implementation of the project. The problem with governmental design-by-committee is that it spreads out the responsibility such that the failure of the project does not fall on any individual or small group. The lack of concentrated responsibility breeds an environment that incentivizes grift rather than delivering value. If the iPhone bombed, it was going to be Steve Jobs' fault. He had final say in all design decisions. If Healthcare.gov bombed... whose head rolled? Excerpt from the wiki article of Todd Park, CTO in the Obama administration: ''' The initial version of HealthCare.gov, which was deployed on July 1, 2010, was built in 90 days by Park and his team at HHS. The first HealthCare.gov was cited by the Kaiser Family Foundation as one of the early highlights in the implementation of the healthcare reform implementation progress. HealthCare.gov was also the first website ever "demoed" by a sitting president The following two versions, from the relaunch of the front end in May 2013 to the badly flawed marketplace that went live in October 2013, were developed by contractors and overseen by officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, outside of his purview within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. When the extent of the problems with Healthcare.gov became clear, Park was tasked by President Obama to work on a "trauma team" that addressed the "technological disaster". Park, along with Jeffrey Zients, led the "tech surge" that ultimately repaired Healthcare.gov over the winter, eventually fixing the marketplace sufficiently to enable millions of Americans to find plans and purchase health insurance. ''' How many of those unnamed officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services got fired for a multi-billion dollar boondoggle? The reason bureaucracies (both government and private) love process, documentation, committees, etc., is because the primary goal of any bureaucracy, far and above its nominal mission, is to continue existing, and a primary part of continuing to exist is to avoid blame for anything. Delegating decision making to committees and process is a key way to avoid blame. "Who is responsible for this mess?" "Nobody is responsible, we followed the process. But don't worry, we've started the process of forming a committee to update our process manual to prevent this mess in the future."

somesortofthing 4y ago
> If Healthcare.gov bombed... whose head rolled? Is your claim here that corporations are able to correctly assign responsibility for major failures? Why do you think this? There are so many ways to deflect blame for your failures onto others while taking full credit for successes you had nothing to do with in the private sector.