4 ms·

I didn't see anything that meant it was doomed from the requirements stage. This was more of an Obama love fest and defense of ObamaCare than a technical artic

by drakaal 13y ago

I didn't see anything that meant it was doomed from the requirements stage. This was more of an Obama love fest and defense of ObamaCare than a technical article describing who the backend was doomed. For what this cost to build it could have been much better, much simpler, and handled the scale gracefully. Yes privacy concerns keep it off the elastic cloud. (not a point mentioned in the article) Yes authenticated users limit caching and make scaling harder. (not really mentioned) But when you are talking about everyone in the US, you only have so many combinations. Income in something like 32 ranges, number of kids 1 through 12 (greater than 12 they are all free) a bunch of ages. We just saw a post that only 15 searches are new to google each day, so the number of combinations is much less than search which does lots of caching. The requirements were messed up, the implementation was. Clearly not built by people who had ever done "Facebook scale" stuff.

GVIrish 13y ago
Well, some reports are that the requirements were changing until 1 week before launch, and that development didn't start until March of this year due to requirements delays. Just those two factors alone would doom just about any project of this scale.
coldcode 13y ago
The primary contractor has had plenty of large gov projects including some for Medicare and SS. Of course so have all large consulting firms and they fail often as well. What the issue is isn't clear from random musings. Unless someone who worked on the project at a high enough level can explain all we have is guesswork.
twistedpair 13y ago
They screwed the pooch, clearly. However I wouldn't assume that the insurance landscape is so simple. You're talking about an insurance industry and legal system that has had a fifty year head start making the process of insurance buying as complicated and obfuscated as possible.

by drakaal 13y ago

GVIrish 13y ago

Well, some reports are that the requirements were changing until 1 week before launch, and that development didn't start until March of this year due to requirements delays. Just those two factors alone would doom just about any project of this scale.

coldcode 13y ago

The primary contractor has had plenty of large gov projects including some for Medicare and SS. Of course so have all large consulting firms and they fail often as well. What the issue is isn't clear from random musings. Unless someone who worked on the project at a high enough level can explain all we have is guesswork.

twistedpair 13y ago

They screwed the pooch, clearly. However I wouldn't assume that the insurance landscape is so simple. You're talking about an insurance industry and legal system that has had a fifty year head start making the process of insurance buying as complicated and obfuscated as possible.