7 ms·

HealthCare.gov’s head tech guy is out

51 points by coloneltcb 13y ago

leeoniya 13y ago
"Our chief operating officer announced yesterday Tony has accepted a position in private sector," so long and thanks for all the rotting fish?
- bluedevil2k 13y ago
  Seriously, he probably asked himself "why bother with all this nonsense, I'll just get another job?".
- ChuckMcM 13y ago
  I suspect that the 'private sector' is one of the contracting companies that did the site to begin with. The guy is lobbiest gold since he knows who is and who isn't able to be influenced in the department.
  - leeoniya 13y ago
    yeah, he likely went into some private consultancy firm that'll be contracted to fix the issues with the abomination (Obamanation?) he knows best, because he built it! But all at private sector rates, still paid for by the taxpayers. nothing pays like ongoing maintenance contracts :)
chintan 13y ago
Whatever happened to the "CTO" of US - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Technology_Officer_of_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Technology_Officer_of_the... Park has been running his part of the massive government agency "like a Silicon Valley company," according to the Atlantic. That approach was particularly relevant in the development of HealthCare.gov, the first government website that provides consumers with a searchable database of public and private health insurance plans available across the U.S. by zip code - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Park http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Park
- thetylerhayes 13y ago
  He's still going strong.
mattkrea 13y ago
Anyone else look at that title and think that it's pretty hilariously unprofessional? Haha EDIT: To print an article with that title, not job title.
ye 13y ago
It's easy to blame one guy, but I'm sure his task was next to impossible. It's not just some independent website where you have full control of your creation. It had to interact with a dozen of other systems, and I'm sure a bunch of APIs were created just for that, and I'm sure bugs in just some of them could render the whole system nonfunctioning. And yes, maybe it is this guy's fault. We don't really know.
- waps 13y ago
  It's even easier when you read the guy's biography : http://www.cms.gov/About-CMS/Leadership/ois/index.html http://www.cms.gov/About-CMS/Leadership/ois/index.html This guy is a typical management idiot. He has no qualifications except "leading" (not specified any further, of course), and making decisions about other people's money. While it's hard finding disastrous decisions in his CV, I'm not seeing anything that suggests he did more than show up. As for leading, he has zero qualifications in either healthcare or IT. I see this at a lot of companies, and someone really should explain it here, where I can ask the question anonymously : how the fuck do these guys get their positions ? Suppose I came in for a job interview about programming cars. First thing I say is that I have zero knowledge about either programming or cars. But I've got "executive awards" and I managed a few people in a completely unremarkable company in a project no-one's ever heard of, or ever will hear off, they were that important. Would you hire me ? I hope not. Why the fuck did this guy get hired ? I can't even fault the guy himself. Of course he's not the right person to lead anything, but he's responding to incentives put in place by the US government, and by companies more generally. Given what he gets paid, of course he's doing whatever his superiors want him to do, without question, and without taking reality into account. Of course he's extremely motivated to lie to everybody to keep that job for just a few more months. The guy who hired him to make responsible decisions about IT, or healthcare, that's the guy that needs firing. Really, I'd love to understand. What, assuming it isn't flat-out corruption or nepotism, motivates someone to hire people like this into important positions they flat-out know nothing about ?
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    Resource allocation and telling people what to do is a skill in itself (which of course requires a lot of attentive listening if it is to be done well). It's easy to dismiss managers as idiots, but that's not much better than dismissing individual tech people as short-sighted folks who can't see the big picture.
djKianoosh 13y ago
Purely cosmetic move. At that level, that "tech guy" is probably 3-5 levels above any real key decision makers and managers involved in the actual implementation. Blaming this on him is like blaming Sepp Blatter for Barcelona's under-13 team's shortcomings. Having worked on federal software projects not even half this large there's a lot of layers. A lot of buffers. and btw, "head tech guy"? Really? Is the Washington Post a serious news organization?
- ep103 13y ago
  No, no they are not.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  It's a blog, and this is a prime example of why I don't consider blogging on the same level as real journalism.
  - Cowen 13y ago
    I'm not going to comment on the blogs vs. real journalism debate, but I'd say Wonkblog is probably one of the best American political blogs running today. Politics is such a polarizing and passionate issue that these blogs easily gain readership among people who already agree with their political agenda. It's incredibly easy to start a political blog that is purely speculation, vitriol, or outright lies. A lot of political blogs even devote themselves to minutiae like dissecting every single word out of Senator John Doe's mouth to advance some ridiculous pre-formulated conclusion -- "Senator Doe ate French Fries! Clearly he hates America!" Wonkblog does none of those things, often posting only about actual reports or expert's interviews. It's both rare and relieving to see a political blog that at least attempts to stick to non-partisanship. Even here you can see that they aren't declaring this event to be any bigger than it is. The guy who oversaw healthcare.gov resigned, here's his resume, here's what he's doing, here's what the CMS said about it. The end.
omegote 13y ago
Do you guys have any link where the whole HealthCare.gov disaster is explained? When I first heard of it, I visited the website and saw no problem - actually found it quite nice.
- garg 13y ago
  Here's one source: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/the-seven-deadly-sins-of-healthcare-gov/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/the-se...
pmorici 13y ago
Here is an interview with the guy, uninspiring stuff... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wghDZagJ_nM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wghDZagJ_nM
- jorgem 13y ago
  Now I know why I don't work for the government. Who would ever create or watch that crap?
- davidbanham 13y ago
  "I've got an iPad that I've been testing... with our infrastructure."
computerslol 13y ago
He probably didn't leave by choice. Jumping off what is perceived to be a sinking ship like that (by choice) before it was fixed would be career suicide. It is however very understandable that he would be found a job to get him out of the way for someone else to do damage control.
dh 13y ago
What this should read is he awarded huge bloated crazy contracts to the private sector and he now has a job at one of those companies.
ne0codex 13y ago
At least the private-contractors are finally facing the consequences, in the beginning the outrage would have let you to believe that it was the President himself who was the one programming away the exchanges!
robomartin 13y ago
Sacrificial lamb. Executing this SNAFU required layers upon layers of incompetent and unmotivated people completely detatched from the consequences of their lack of performance. Since this describes a vast majority of the people who work for government it is easy to imagine a one million dollar website turning into a six hundred million dollar website that does not work. In any other universe people would have been fired by the hundreds and some even brought up on charges. Not in government. Until we have a system that makes them all fully accountable for their actions this will not change. Many of you are just waking up to the horrible reality that this is how nearly everything is done in government. Just. Like . This.

51 points by coloneltcb 13y ago

"Our chief operating officer announced yesterday Tony has accepted a position in private sector," so long and thanks for all the rotting fish?

bluedevil2k 13y ago
Seriously, he probably asked himself "why bother with all this nonsense, I'll just get another job?".
ChuckMcM 13y ago
I suspect that the 'private sector' is one of the contracting companies that did the site to begin with. The guy is lobbiest gold since he knows who is and who isn't able to be influenced in the department.
- leeoniya 13y ago
  yeah, he likely went into some private consultancy firm that'll be contracted to fix the issues with the abomination (Obamanation?) he knows best, because he built it! But all at private sector rates, still paid for by the taxpayers. nothing pays like ongoing maintenance contracts :)

chintan 13y ago

Whatever happened to the "CTO" of US - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Technology_Officer_of_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Technology_Officer_of_the... Park has been running his part of the massive government agency "like a Silicon Valley company," according to the Atlantic. That approach was particularly relevant in the development of HealthCare.gov, the first government website that provides consumers with a searchable database of public and private health insurance plans available across the U.S. by zip code - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Park http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Park

thetylerhayes 13y ago
He's still going strong.

mattkrea 13y ago

Anyone else look at that title and think that it's pretty hilariously unprofessional? Haha EDIT: To print an article with that title, not job title.

ye 13y ago

It's easy to blame one guy, but I'm sure his task was next to impossible. It's not just some independent website where you have full control of your creation. It had to interact with a dozen of other systems, and I'm sure a bunch of APIs were created just for that, and I'm sure bugs in just some of them could render the whole system nonfunctioning. And yes, maybe it is this guy's fault. We don't really know.

waps 13y ago
It's even easier when you read the guy's biography : http://www.cms.gov/About-CMS/Leadership/ois/index.html http://www.cms.gov/About-CMS/Leadership/ois/index.html This guy is a typical management idiot. He has no qualifications except "leading" (not specified any further, of course), and making decisions about other people's money. While it's hard finding disastrous decisions in his CV, I'm not seeing anything that suggests he did more than show up. As for leading, he has zero qualifications in either healthcare or IT. I see this at a lot of companies, and someone really should explain it here, where I can ask the question anonymously : how the fuck do these guys get their positions ? Suppose I came in for a job interview about programming cars. First thing I say is that I have zero knowledge about either programming or cars. But I've got "executive awards" and I managed a few people in a completely unremarkable company in a project no-one's ever heard of, or ever will hear off, they were that important. Would you hire me ? I hope not. Why the fuck did this guy get hired ? I can't even fault the guy himself. Of course he's not the right person to lead anything, but he's responding to incentives put in place by the US government, and by companies more generally. Given what he gets paid, of course he's doing whatever his superiors want him to do, without question, and without taking reality into account. Of course he's extremely motivated to lie to everybody to keep that job for just a few more months. The guy who hired him to make responsible decisions about IT, or healthcare, that's the guy that needs firing. Really, I'd love to understand. What, assuming it isn't flat-out corruption or nepotism, motivates someone to hire people like this into important positions they flat-out know nothing about ?
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  Resource allocation and telling people what to do is a skill in itself (which of course requires a lot of attentive listening if it is to be done well). It's easy to dismiss managers as idiots, but that's not much better than dismissing individual tech people as short-sighted folks who can't see the big picture.

djKianoosh 13y ago

Purely cosmetic move. At that level, that "tech guy" is probably 3-5 levels above any real key decision makers and managers involved in the actual implementation. Blaming this on him is like blaming Sepp Blatter for Barcelona's under-13 team's shortcomings. Having worked on federal software projects not even half this large there's a lot of layers. A lot of buffers. and btw, "head tech guy"? Really? Is the Washington Post a serious news organization?

ep103 13y ago
No, no they are not.
anigbrowl 13y ago
It's a blog, and this is a prime example of why I don't consider blogging on the same level as real journalism.
- Cowen 13y ago
  I'm not going to comment on the blogs vs. real journalism debate, but I'd say Wonkblog is probably one of the best American political blogs running today. Politics is such a polarizing and passionate issue that these blogs easily gain readership among people who already agree with their political agenda. It's incredibly easy to start a political blog that is purely speculation, vitriol, or outright lies. A lot of political blogs even devote themselves to minutiae like dissecting every single word out of Senator John Doe's mouth to advance some ridiculous pre-formulated conclusion -- "Senator Doe ate French Fries! Clearly he hates America!" Wonkblog does none of those things, often posting only about actual reports or expert's interviews. It's both rare and relieving to see a political blog that at least attempts to stick to non-partisanship. Even here you can see that they aren't declaring this event to be any bigger than it is. The guy who oversaw healthcare.gov resigned, here's his resume, here's what he's doing, here's what the CMS said about it. The end.

omegote 13y ago

Do you guys have any link where the whole HealthCare.gov disaster is explained? When I first heard of it, I visited the website and saw no problem - actually found it quite nice.

garg 13y ago
Here's one source: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/the-seven-deadly-sins-of-healthcare-gov/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/the-se...

pmorici 13y ago

Here is an interview with the guy, uninspiring stuff... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wghDZagJ_nM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wghDZagJ_nM

jorgem 13y ago
Now I know why I don't work for the government. Who would ever create or watch that crap?
davidbanham 13y ago
"I've got an iPad that I've been testing... with our infrastructure."

computerslol 13y ago

He probably didn't leave by choice. Jumping off what is perceived to be a sinking ship like that (by choice) before it was fixed would be career suicide. It is however very understandable that he would be found a job to get him out of the way for someone else to do damage control.

dh 13y ago

What this should read is he awarded huge bloated crazy contracts to the private sector and he now has a job at one of those companies.

ne0codex 13y ago

At least the private-contractors are finally facing the consequences, in the beginning the outrage would have let you to believe that it was the President himself who was the one programming away the exchanges!

robomartin 13y ago

Sacrificial lamb. Executing this SNAFU required layers upon layers of incompetent and unmotivated people completely detatched from the consequences of their lack of performance. Since this describes a vast majority of the people who work for government it is easy to imagine a one million dollar website turning into a six hundred million dollar website that does not work. In any other universe people would have been fired by the hundreds and some even brought up on charges. Not in government. Until we have a system that makes them all fully accountable for their actions this will not change. Many of you are just waking up to the horrible reality that this is how nearly everything is done in government. Just. Like . This.