3 ms·

My thoughts on reading this were a little bit "that's a nice lucritive contract and revenue stream that Booz Allen has exclusive access to" but mostly "if the U

My thoughts on reading this were a little bit "that's a nice lucritive contract and revenue stream that Booz Allen has exclusive access to" but mostly "if the U.S. Government were to try do do this themselves, it would have been another healthcare.gov fiasco and cost twice as much as Booz Allen is taking"

grogenaut 3y ago
100% chance BAH built large parts of healthcare.gov
plasma_beam 3y ago
Govt contracting firm CGI built healthcare.gov then the rescue staff that would later become Presidential Innovation Fellows, 18F, US Digital Service as well as Accenture stepped in. Nowadays more than a few consulting firms keep the site going. These days there are PLENTY of govt IT fiascos, though there’s usually a contractor behind the mess. They also don’t attract the mainstream ire the way healthcare.gov did. The biggest example that jumps to mind is the VA’s botched rollout of the Cerner/Oracle platform. Plenty of angry congressmen but not headline news outside the DMV (DC, MD, VA).
bsder 3y ago
healthcare.gov was a disaster for a combination of reasons. However, one of the primary reasons is had such a rough start was because FAR too many people were channelled into it. The individual states were supposed to set up their own systems that the Federal system would reimburse and channel people into. Places like California did so--and the experience was quite decent. The problem, of course, was the all the Red states refusing to set up a system and all their citizens wound up in the healthcare.gov system. Of course, the major problem with healthcare.gov was the same problem as with all government contracts--outsourcing. All contractors basically play "chicken" with the government--they take all the money they can up front and do as little work as they can until the very last moment. If they get really lucky, the program gets cancelled and they get to keep all the money having done no work. Normally, they get yelled at at some point and have to put in work while the schedule slips and slips. Occasionally, though, they wind up with a contract that they didn't do jack on that had a real deadline and the contractor winds up with egg on their face. This was healthcare.gov.
manicennui 3y ago
WTF are you talking about? HealthCare.gov was built by private companies.
- _fs 3y ago
  Do you not remember the launch failure of healthcare.gov? The original site was built by federal contractors, who took over 300 million dollars, and it failed on day 1. Day 2, Obama brought in private, US Tech companies to fix it.
  - manicennui 3y ago
    Yes, I remember, and it was built by private companies. "Development of the website's interface as well as its supporting back-end services, to make sure that the website could work to help people compare between health insurance plans, were both outsourced to private companies. The front-end of the website was developed by the startup Development Seed.[2] The back-end work was contracted out to CGI Federal Inc., a subsidiary of the Canadian IT Multinational corporation| CGI Group, which subcontracted the work to other companies, as is common on large government contracts.[11] CGI was also responsible for building some of the state-level healthcare exchanges, with varying levels of success (some did not open on schedule).[9]" CGI is the company that was the focus of the blame at the time.

grogenaut 3y ago

100% chance BAH built large parts of healthcare.gov

plasma_beam 3y ago

Govt contracting firm CGI built healthcare.gov then the rescue staff that would later become Presidential Innovation Fellows, 18F, US Digital Service as well as Accenture stepped in. Nowadays more than a few consulting firms keep the site going. These days there are PLENTY of govt IT fiascos, though there’s usually a contractor behind the mess. They also don’t attract the mainstream ire the way healthcare.gov did. The biggest example that jumps to mind is the VA’s botched rollout of the Cerner/Oracle platform. Plenty of angry congressmen but not headline news outside the DMV (DC, MD, VA).

bsder 3y ago

healthcare.gov was a disaster for a combination of reasons. However, one of the primary reasons is had such a rough start was because FAR too many people were channelled into it. The individual states were supposed to set up their own systems that the Federal system would reimburse and channel people into. Places like California did so--and the experience was quite decent. The problem, of course, was the all the Red states refusing to set up a system and all their citizens wound up in the healthcare.gov system. Of course, the major problem with healthcare.gov was the same problem as with all government contracts--outsourcing. All contractors basically play "chicken" with the government--they take all the money they can up front and do as little work as they can until the very last moment. If they get really lucky, the program gets cancelled and they get to keep all the money having done no work. Normally, they get yelled at at some point and have to put in work while the schedule slips and slips. Occasionally, though, they wind up with a contract that they didn't do jack on that had a real deadline and the contractor winds up with egg on their face. This was healthcare.gov.

manicennui 3y ago

WTF are you talking about? HealthCare.gov was built by private companies.

_fs 3y ago
Do you not remember the launch failure of healthcare.gov? The original site was built by federal contractors, who took over 300 million dollars, and it failed on day 1. Day 2, Obama brought in private, US Tech companies to fix it.
- manicennui 3y ago
  Yes, I remember, and it was built by private companies. "Development of the website's interface as well as its supporting back-end services, to make sure that the website could work to help people compare between health insurance plans, were both outsourced to private companies. The front-end of the website was developed by the startup Development Seed.[2] The back-end work was contracted out to CGI Federal Inc., a subsidiary of the Canadian IT Multinational corporation| CGI Group, which subcontracted the work to other companies, as is common on large government contracts.[11] CGI was also responsible for building some of the state-level healthcare exchanges, with varying levels of success (some did not open on schedule).[9]" CGI is the company that was the focus of the blame at the time.