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The Whitehouse is the executive branch; they are paid to execute and ultimately this is entirely their responsibility. They are the project managers of this ent

The Whitehouse is the executive branch; they are paid to execute and ultimately this is entirely their responsibility. They are the project managers of this entire mess. Now imagine those same people deciding your medical treatment. It's just sheer incompetence disguised as politics. The executive branch has 2.1 million employees and is structured as set of a dozen subsidiary companies each with dozens of subsidiary companies. It is impossible for the Whitehouse, any Whitehouse, to manage except in a completely delegatory way. The idea that someone at the Whitehouse is going to be doing checkins with the contractors brought in to build a website is, frankly, laughable considering the number of things competing for attention. I mean, would you call Warren Buffet incompetent if GEICO rolled out a faulty website because he ultimately controls it?

briandear 13y ago
Ok, so who the hell is in charge then? After all, The Affordable Car Act is the President's "Signature Legislative Achievement." So You going to simply say that the President isn't responsible because he has too many employes and can't possibly manage. That's a scary thought because the President is also in charge of another large organization -- the military. So your logic would suggest that the President isn't responsible for the acts of the military, yet in the same breath folks have no problem blaming Bush for Abu Ghraib. As Harry Truman said, the buck stops here. By the way, Warren Buffet isn't the CEO of GEICO. Tom Nicely is and yes, I would certainly call Mr. Nicely incompetent is a website they had over 2 years of lead time to build faild, especially if it were part of Mr. Nicely's "Signature" achievement and grand promise to revolutionize auto insurance for the company's customers. Should Steve Balmer be blamed for Windows Vista? Balmer had almost 100K employees, so obviously Vista couldn't have been his fault. Guys, it's a damned website! It's essentially just a guided questionnaire. The "tough" part is that it probably has to talk to insurance company APIs. Other than that, it was purely a greenfield project. I'm sure we could assemble a team of 10 guys (or girls) from right here in Hacker News and could build a better product in 25% of the time at 1/100th of the cost. Actually, I would go so far as to say that the basic functionality could be built with a team of 6 with a budget of $500K. Remember, this site ISN'T administering insurance. It's Kayak for insurance -- that's pretty much it. There is NO excuse for this level of incompetence. If I built healthcare.gov for a private client I wouldn't have been paid. I probably would have been sued. Yet according to the person to whom I am replying, The White House bears no responsibility because the government is just too damned big for the President to be responsible. I didn't elect the President to suck, but that's what's happening.
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  > That's a scary thought because the President is also in charge of another large organization -- the military. So your logic would suggest that the President isn't responsible for the acts of the military, yet in the same breath folks have no problem blaming Bush for Abu Ghraib. Something being scary doesn't make it untrue. It would not particularly surprise me if the first that Bush heard of Abu Ghraib was when it hit the news. There are of course relative degrees of responsibility - you are responsible for the people you hire, and if you have few concerns then your responsibility for those concerns individually goes up since you have more time to devote to oversight on them. But do any of us think that a president has few concerns and is directly involved with hiring three or four levels of abstraction beneath them?
- GVIrish 13y ago
  The reason Bush is blamed for Abu Gharaib is because guidance came from the White House that torture was authorized in order to gain intelligence. Very different than if some subordinates tortured people of their own accord. Healthcare.gov is not just a damned website. The backend has to integrate with the IRS, Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, private insurance companies, and the various state exchanges. No you could not have assembled a team of 10 developers in 25% of the time for 1% of the cost. No offense but you clearly are not familiar with any of the details of why healthcare.gov failed. Requirements came in so late that development didn't start until March, giving them at the most, 7 months of time to develop this thing. So you're saying that a team of 10 could've gotten this thing built in less than 2 months? And that this fictional team could've gotten away with 1 week of full integration testing? The government integrators (CMS) didn't make that full test happen until 1 week before launch. I agree that there is no excuse for this level of incompetence, but a lot of that incompetence is on the part of the customer. An ill-prepared group was given systems integration responsibilities, requirements came in very late and they were changing right up to release, not enough time was allocated to integration testing, and no one sounded the alarm that this was going to be a disaster. Now maybe the president knew, maybe he didn't. The responsibility for something like this would've fallen on Kathleen Sebelius. Did she know the project was off the rails? Did she inform the White House? If she didn't know, she didn't do her job, if she did know and didn't sound the alarm, she didn't do her job. The only scenario where she is not to blame is if she sounded the alarm to the president, and the president told her to push ahead. So far there has been no indication that this was the case.

briandear 13y ago

Ok, so who the hell is in charge then? After all, The Affordable Car Act is the President's "Signature Legislative Achievement." So You going to simply say that the President isn't responsible because he has too many employes and can't possibly manage. That's a scary thought because the President is also in charge of another large organization -- the military. So your logic would suggest that the President isn't responsible for the acts of the military, yet in the same breath folks have no problem blaming Bush for Abu Ghraib. As Harry Truman said, the buck stops here. By the way, Warren Buffet isn't the CEO of GEICO. Tom Nicely is and yes, I would certainly call Mr. Nicely incompetent is a website they had over 2 years of lead time to build faild, especially if it were part of Mr. Nicely's "Signature" achievement and grand promise to revolutionize auto insurance for the company's customers. Should Steve Balmer be blamed for Windows Vista? Balmer had almost 100K employees, so obviously Vista couldn't have been his fault. Guys, it's a damned website! It's essentially just a guided questionnaire. The "tough" part is that it probably has to talk to insurance company APIs. Other than that, it was purely a greenfield project. I'm sure we could assemble a team of 10 guys (or girls) from right here in Hacker News and could build a better product in 25% of the time at 1/100th of the cost. Actually, I would go so far as to say that the basic functionality could be built with a team of 6 with a budget of $500K. Remember, this site ISN'T administering insurance. It's Kayak for insurance -- that's pretty much it. There is NO excuse for this level of incompetence. If I built healthcare.gov for a private client I wouldn't have been paid. I probably would have been sued. Yet according to the person to whom I am replying, The White House bears no responsibility because the government is just too damned big for the President to be responsible. I didn't elect the President to suck, but that's what's happening.

6d0debc071 13y ago
> That's a scary thought because the President is also in charge of another large organization -- the military. So your logic would suggest that the President isn't responsible for the acts of the military, yet in the same breath folks have no problem blaming Bush for Abu Ghraib. Something being scary doesn't make it untrue. It would not particularly surprise me if the first that Bush heard of Abu Ghraib was when it hit the news. There are of course relative degrees of responsibility - you are responsible for the people you hire, and if you have few concerns then your responsibility for those concerns individually goes up since you have more time to devote to oversight on them. But do any of us think that a president has few concerns and is directly involved with hiring three or four levels of abstraction beneath them?
GVIrish 13y ago
The reason Bush is blamed for Abu Gharaib is because guidance came from the White House that torture was authorized in order to gain intelligence. Very different than if some subordinates tortured people of their own accord. Healthcare.gov is not just a damned website. The backend has to integrate with the IRS, Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, private insurance companies, and the various state exchanges. No you could not have assembled a team of 10 developers in 25% of the time for 1% of the cost. No offense but you clearly are not familiar with any of the details of why healthcare.gov failed. Requirements came in so late that development didn't start until March, giving them at the most, 7 months of time to develop this thing. So you're saying that a team of 10 could've gotten this thing built in less than 2 months? And that this fictional team could've gotten away with 1 week of full integration testing? The government integrators (CMS) didn't make that full test happen until 1 week before launch. I agree that there is no excuse for this level of incompetence, but a lot of that incompetence is on the part of the customer. An ill-prepared group was given systems integration responsibilities, requirements came in very late and they were changing right up to release, not enough time was allocated to integration testing, and no one sounded the alarm that this was going to be a disaster. Now maybe the president knew, maybe he didn't. The responsibility for something like this would've fallen on Kathleen Sebelius. Did she know the project was off the rails? Did she inform the White House? If she didn't know, she didn't do her job, if she did know and didn't sound the alarm, she didn't do her job. The only scenario where she is not to blame is if she sounded the alarm to the president, and the president told her to push ahead. So far there has been no indication that this was the case.