Technology Project #fail

Yesterday the Kansas City Star published an AP story called "Builders of Obama's Website Saw Red Flags." This week Obama admitted there's some "kinks in the system" and apparently "no one is madder" than him. I don't think he's right on either point. Everything I've read regarding the technical structure of the system leads me to believe it's more poor design than "kinks." I'd also argue there's plenty of "mad" to go around with regards this debacle.

Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't healthcare.gov essentially a portal to Healthcare Exchanges that insurance companies & the government have been furiously building since ACA was passed in 2010? Sign yourself up, answer a few questions, and the data interface magic should do the job.Unfortunately it appears that those in charge of the interface magic apparently weren't thinking. This article by Will Oremus over at the Slate gives you a glipse of how poorly the project was executed. 500 million lines of code is likely to lead to a lot of dead ends and broken links.

There's plenty of good reading on this subject regarding its cost and what they're doing to fix it. Even NSA leaker and current Russian exile Edward Snowden made an offer to fix it in exchange for immunity.

As a guy who spends a lot of time the technoloyg space I find this whole situation as facsinating as troubling. The "kinks" in the system have nothing to do with the law itself. It's simply an example of an incredible failure on the part of nearly everyone involved in building an enterprise system.

I think healthcare.gov will be an example of how not to handle a major technical project for years to come. Lets just hope they can get it figured out, and soon.

Would love to hear your thoughts on what went wrong.