It Needed Five Years Of Construction And A Year Of Testing

[MSimon]

The online insurance marketplace needed five years of construction and a year of testing, she said: "We had two years and almost no testing."

In her role as HHS secretary, Mrs. Sebelius is traveling around the U.S. to persuade people to sign up for coverage. The new health-insurance exchanges must have broad participation to make the program economically viable.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1 ... 1314028434

Very Progressive.

[Jccarlton]

The online insurance marketplace needed five years of construction and a year of testing, she said: "We had two years and almost no testing."

In her role as HHS secretary, Mrs. Sebelius is traveling around the U.S. to persuade people to sign up for coverage. The new health-insurance exchanges must have broad participation to make the program economically viable.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1 ... 1314028434

Very Progressive.

It's even worse than that. Apparently they were snippeting code:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/36 ... ling-beard
And didn't actually start coding until just over six months ago.:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/10/ ... _hole.html

And a lot of those last minute changes to try to hide how sucky things were are a big part of the problem:
http://jewishworldreview.com/michael/ba ... mfv_tF3vIX
If the young figure out how screwed they have been by the Dems and Obama It's going to get uglier than it already is.

[Stubby]

The implementation of the ACA has been a clusterfornication.

[jgarry]

IT projects with problems? Unheard of.

[JLawson]

IT projects with problems? Unheard of.

I expect problems - but I expect for $300-600 million to have a certain level of competency in the code... as in, 'Almost completely working and massively tested, with the occasional rare bug' on the day of the rollout. Amazon level, or BankofAmerica level - something professional and polished and WORKING.

Not an 'I was making websites for cheap on 1and1.com last week and look at me now' level. I can put in JPGs and working buttons!

This mess, however, is probably rapidly being scrubbed off the resumes of the original coders... who are probably looking at career changes to get away from the debacle.

[MSimon]

IT projects with problems? Unheard of.

I expect problems - but I expect for $300-600 million to have a certain level of competency in the code... as in, 'Almost completely working and massively tested, with the occasional rare bug' on the day of the rollout. Amazon level, or BankofAmerica level - something professional and polished and WORKING.

Not an 'I was making websites for cheap on 1and1.com last week and look at me now' level. I can put in JPGs and working buttons!

This mess, however, is probably rapidly being scrubbed off the resumes of the original coders... who are probably looking at career changes to get away from the debacle.

There are rumors that the company doing the work was paid by the "line of code' (LOC) metric. I have seen estimates of 500 million LOC with estimates of 5 million bad lines.

[JLawson]

IT projects with problems? Unheard of.

I expect problems - but I expect for $300-600 million to have a certain level of competency in the code... as in, 'Almost completely working and massively tested, with the occasional rare bug' on the day of the rollout. Amazon level, or BankofAmerica level - something professional and polished and WORKING.

Not an 'I was making websites for cheap on 1and1.com last week and look at me now' level. I can put in JPGs and working buttons!

This mess, however, is probably rapidly being scrubbed off the resumes of the original coders... who are probably looking at career changes to get away from the debacle.

There are rumors that the company doing the work was paid by the "line of code' (LOC) metric. I have seen estimates of 500 million LOC with estimates of 5 million bad lines.

Don't think the language filter will pass what I'm thinking on that...

Should have paid for performance. Spec out the job, freeze the design (which I believe didn't happen at all) set up benchmarks, and then if they can't do the job they don't get paid.

As it is - there's not going to be a quick fix. At this point, Obama's only hope is to change the subject and hope everyone forgets about the rectal rocket this thing is.

At the next speech, after the obligatory fainting lady, I can imagine him coming out with...

"Oh, look over there! A squirrel! Let's all look at the squirrel and forget about Obamacare. And then I'll announce my new laser-like focus on a pivot to jobs. Or immigration. Or anything but Obamacare. (Does Jedi hand wave.) This is not the Obamacare you were looking for. Let's move along."

[hanelyp]

There's a saying in the computer field that the only bug free code is trivial or obsolete. This project is hardly trivial. We can hope it is rendered obsolete by repeal of the Patently Preposterous Abusive Crime Act.

There are rumors that the company doing the work was paid by the "line of code' (LOC) metric

I've worked on code that I suspect was originally developed on that basis. Horridly difficult to maintain with large blocks of code almost duplicated umpteen times with minor changes for umpteen trivially different use cases. Numerous web forms, some near or complete duplicates of each other, each duplicated 5 times to support different languages. The underlying database structure echoed this mess, with a separate table for each language the the forms might use.

I've also worked on code with that same short but critical block reused without edits, that I attribute to an unskilled developer.

[Diogenes]

The implementation of the ACA has been a clusterfornication.

The IDEA is a clusterfornication.

[Diogenes]

http://neoneocon.com/2013/10/23/canada- ... ery-slope/

[Jccarlton]

IT projects with problems? Unheard of.

Apparently they thought so. That's the often the problem with even very smart people who don't actually do technical work. They think it works like magic, where you wave your hands and it all happens. They don't see the hours of frustration, the constant failures and do overs, the issues that come up at the last minute that you didn't think of, all of the stuff that you have to deal with that makes the magic happen. Much of that may be we engineers' fault, because we like looking smarter than we are and just pulling stuff out our hats.

[choff]

The thing I picked up when the original health bill was passed was that Pres. Obama was employing the technique of Lyndon Johnson who said, 'the important thing is to get it passed now, fix it later,' and it would seem that later is now.

With Health now eating up 17.6% of GDP U.S., it becomes impossible for a company to resist moving abroad, must get fixed soon.

[Jccarlton]

A real chat session from somebody needing help from healthcare.gov:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8Q8a3vTyQ0
You know it's bad when your software and help setup write your opposition's ads for them. "Don't run with scissors" indeed.

[Schneibster]

The need for a web site was delayed by the Republican-Amurcn teatraitors. They insisted on delayed implementation of ACA.

You'd all be making fun of the healthcare exchanges web site if it'd been set up five years ago; they weren't legal until now. It would have been a waste of money.

Maybe you all forgot.

But I doubt it.

A lot.

[choff]

If you checkout the history of nationalized healthcare in every other western country what you find is that they set it up before the advent of computers. In my country, we actually have 10 provincial healthcare programs. The provinces do the admin, the Feds share cost and maintain uniform standards.

It's very difficult to believe there wasn't a deliberate intention to fail at work in the U.S.