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I wonder if they also fired the government people that insisted that the site had to use a weird proprietary XML database called MarkLogic, which apparently was

by guelo 13y ago

I wonder if they also fired the government people that insisted that the site had to use a weird proprietary XML database called MarkLogic, which apparently was one of the reasons for the concurrency problems. (As described here http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/23/us/politics/tension-and-woes-before-health-website-crash.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/23/us/politics/tension-and-wo...) A SQL server, probably Oracle, should almost always be the answer for a large bureaucratic product like this.

hga 13y ago
I find it difficult to judge the quality of the database given what we've learned, especially since the initial provisioning was entirely inadequate for any database; about when that article was written it was moved off government's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) shared VM infrastructure to 12 dedicated servers. However, there's absolutely no doubt the contractors weren't familiar with it and its paradigm. A SQL RDBMS, which pretty much everyone is familiar with, would have been a much less risky bet. But the CMS had had success with the XML database, and since they arrogated to themselves the roles of general contractor and system integrator (and in fact were "fired" about the time that article was written), the consulting companies had no choice but to use it. See my other comment where people are suspecting Accenture might just throw away a lot of the current system and replace it with what they did for California. EDITED: to make more clear the distinction between the unit of the Federal government CMS and CGI Federal, the fired contractor.
- rhizome 13y ago
  since they arrogated to themselves the roles of general contractor and system integrator ...and also attempted to arrogate to themselves those future roles. Would that there were taxpayer protections against that kind of anti-competitive (on face, at least) strategy.
  - hga 13y ago
    Not entirely sure that's necessary when those who do it fail so hard, i.e. there's at least some feedback in the system. The other exchange example where this happened is Oregon, which isn't even pretending that their site works.
    - rhizome 13y ago
      Well, I'm sure there are ton of gov't contractors who have locked themselves in successfully. The feedback only factors in negative cases, but it's still harmful in the positive one.
      - hga 13y ago
        I think you may have made a misapprehension based on CMS being a similar acronym to CGI, the fired contractor. The former is the Federal government's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and those government bureaucrats are the ones that arrogated to themselves technical management roles they were completely inadequate to handle. Ditto Oregon, when they hired a new IT person who though they could save something like $32 million by being the prime contractor (as I recall; don't remember what happened with systems integration, except of course it's still totally failing). We could only wish that government contractors had locked themselves into the prime contractor and systems integrator roles for CMS or HHS; who knows, maybe they would even have had the stones to tell the politicians NO! when the latter continued making requirements changes too late for implementation. Compare to Kentucky, which won by hiring a prime (Deloitte) who maintained a ruthless focus on what we call the MVP.
MrZongle2 13y ago
"I wonder if they also fired the government people..." Heh. That's a good one.
- tlrobinson 13y ago
  I'm reminded of Ron Swanson's joke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py7OHW3HELk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py7OHW3HELk
rhizome 13y ago
weird proprietary XML database called MarkLogic MDD: Mortgage Driven Development http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/agile-testing/refuctoring-your-cukes http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/agile-testing/refuctoring-yo...
negamax 13y ago
Great note at end of the article. Requirements and direction couldn't be simpler! “This is real simple,” Mr. Obama said, during a speech in Maryland on Sept. 26. “It’s a website where you can compare and purchase affordable health insurance plans side by side the same way you shop for a plane ticket on Kayak, same way you shop for a TV on Amazon. You just go on, and you start looking, and here are all the options.”
- hga 13y ago
  Of course, they couldn't leave well enough alone. On those sites, well, on Amazon at least, you don't have to log in until you've put something in your cart and are ready to "check out" and pay (which you can't, BTW, do on Healthcare.gov. Pay for anything, that is.) I.e. "window shopping". In August, less than 2 months before launch, orders came down from on high that all interactions would have to be proceeded by account creation and login. (Why? Well, given that you could only give it your current set of numbers under penalty of perjury....) 1 week before launch, the 2nd week into testing, the system failed with something like 200 simultaneous simulated logins).

by guelo 13y ago

hga 13y ago

I find it difficult to judge the quality of the database given what we've learned, especially since the initial provisioning was entirely inadequate for any database; about when that article was written it was moved off government's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) shared VM infrastructure to 12 dedicated servers. However, there's absolutely no doubt the contractors weren't familiar with it and its paradigm. A SQL RDBMS, which pretty much everyone is familiar with, would have been a much less risky bet. But the CMS had had success with the XML database, and since they arrogated to themselves the roles of general contractor and system integrator (and in fact were "fired" about the time that article was written), the consulting companies had no choice but to use it. See my other comment where people are suspecting Accenture might just throw away a lot of the current system and replace it with what they did for California. EDITED: to make more clear the distinction between the unit of the Federal government CMS and CGI Federal, the fired contractor.

rhizome 13y ago
since they arrogated to themselves the roles of general contractor and system integrator ...and also attempted to arrogate to themselves those future roles. Would that there were taxpayer protections against that kind of anti-competitive (on face, at least) strategy.
- hga 13y ago
  Not entirely sure that's necessary when those who do it fail so hard, i.e. there's at least some feedback in the system. The other exchange example where this happened is Oregon, which isn't even pretending that their site works.
  - rhizome 13y ago
    Well, I'm sure there are ton of gov't contractors who have locked themselves in successfully. The feedback only factors in negative cases, but it's still harmful in the positive one.
    - hga 13y ago
      I think you may have made a misapprehension based on CMS being a similar acronym to CGI, the fired contractor. The former is the Federal government's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and those government bureaucrats are the ones that arrogated to themselves technical management roles they were completely inadequate to handle. Ditto Oregon, when they hired a new IT person who though they could save something like $32 million by being the prime contractor (as I recall; don't remember what happened with systems integration, except of course it's still totally failing). We could only wish that government contractors had locked themselves into the prime contractor and systems integrator roles for CMS or HHS; who knows, maybe they would even have had the stones to tell the politicians NO! when the latter continued making requirements changes too late for implementation. Compare to Kentucky, which won by hiring a prime (Deloitte) who maintained a ruthless focus on what we call the MVP.

MrZongle2 13y ago

"I wonder if they also fired the government people..." Heh. That's a good one.

tlrobinson 13y ago
I'm reminded of Ron Swanson's joke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py7OHW3HELk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py7OHW3HELk

rhizome 13y ago

weird proprietary XML database called MarkLogic MDD: Mortgage Driven Development http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/agile-testing/refuctoring-your-cukes http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/agile-testing/refuctoring-yo...

negamax 13y ago

Great note at end of the article. Requirements and direction couldn't be simpler! “This is real simple,” Mr. Obama said, during a speech in Maryland on Sept. 26. “It’s a website where you can compare and purchase affordable health insurance plans side by side the same way you shop for a plane ticket on Kayak, same way you shop for a TV on Amazon. You just go on, and you start looking, and here are all the options.”

hga 13y ago
Of course, they couldn't leave well enough alone. On those sites, well, on Amazon at least, you don't have to log in until you've put something in your cart and are ready to "check out" and pay (which you can't, BTW, do on Healthcare.gov. Pay for anything, that is.) I.e. "window shopping". In August, less than 2 months before launch, orders came down from on high that all interactions would have to be proceeded by account creation and login. (Why? Well, given that you could only give it your current set of numbers under penalty of perjury....) 1 week before launch, the 2nd week into testing, the system failed with something like 200 simultaneous simulated logins).