There will always be disagreements regarding three topics - healthcare, government, and technology. When you add them all together you get healthcare.gov. And yes, it caused problems.
Earlier this month, healthcare.gov launched... and failed. The message below was a common sight, and while the crash is blamed on a quick influx of people, there were numerous technological problems to begin with. Like the IPO of Facebook, more research should have been done prior to the launch. There was too much hype and not enough results. An article by ARS Technica, discussed the "seven deadly sins of Healthcare.gov" that I list below and discuss in my own terms.
1) Hyper-Complexity. There were 3 companies working on the program website with their own objectives. The site needed an actual web page, a computer software to communicate applications from different computers, and a data integration center to collect and disperse the data. It's like having a German brick layer, a Chinese glass-maker, and an American metal worker all trying to build one house in Italy.
2) Dependency issues. All of the users' data comes from a company outside the government and the tech industry. Therefore, when changes needed to be made to the data, such as names not matching the ages, then you had to rely on a third party that may or may not be reliable all the time. Imagine your roommate controlling whether you get you pass your exams or not.
3) All new construction. The Affordable Care Act is a completely new bill, therefore the systems and algorithms to match it are completely new. Healthcare.gov takes information from other places like insurance companies, yet their systems don't match the new systems. Hence new 'middleware" software has to be developed. When UNC-Charlotte creates a new major, the professor may have taught at a university before but he has to create all new material to make a syllabus.
4) Rolling requirements. As with anything, when they were creating the system, unexpected problems kept arising. Issues added and diminished the requirements of the website and it also created a fluctuating deadline. The CEO of Pepsico constantly changes her long-term strategy to compensate for unexpected factors such as a recession.
5) Anti-testing. With a fast-approaching deadline, programmers did not have time to test the programs they created. President Obama did a demo, yet it was never pre-tested like companies do with their products. Imagine if you were told that all you had to do to graduate college was give a speech on your major the next day. You probably would make a lot more mistakes than if you had a whole year to prepare for it.
6) Release late and once. Gallagher suggests that the government could have released a small portion of the site at a time, such as putting up information about the program and it's features the first week and then insurance data the next. In a sense, they bit off more than they can chew. Try eating a caramel-covered apple in one bite.
7) Anti-bugfixing.Programmers did not put the anti-bug software onto the site until after it was launched. Without the appropriate tracking devices, they couldn't figure out where the problems stemmed from. In the morning, try putting you socks on after you shoes. You may be able to do it, but you'll probably have difficulty functioning throughout the day.
Systems may seem complex, but the problems faced in implementing a system correlate to common every-day problems. The main issue with Healthcare.gov is creating having to create the webpage so quickly. Coordinating between companies to collect data and integrate into an operating system takes time which is why most IT companies only come out with new products and services about every year or two.
Check out the website at https://www.healthcare.gov/. What do you think? Are there any other "sins" of the website you can think of? How can the government go about implementing systems for legislation going forward?
Gallagher, Sean (2013, October). The seven deadly sins of Healthcare.gov. Retreived from http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/the-seven-deadly-sins-of-healthcare-gov/
Are you kidding me?? If I am reading this correctly, I cannot believe that the government has all this money, regardless of what they make us believe, and they cannot even launch a proper healthcare website or system. This is absurd, they should have the top Anti Virus, testing systems and rollout procedures in all of America. I know that problems arise regardless of who or where you are but the government can do much better than this. They really need to get it together..
ReplyDeleteGreat examples! They definitely should have gone about creating and releasing the website differently.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who has watched the news has seen the stories about the problems with the Obama Healthcare website rollout. With the complex issues I never really understood what all the problems were. This was a great post!
ReplyDeleteThere were high expectations even before the website was officially launched. Many of these problems, I think, came from the number of people, of course, but also came from thousands or even millions of people who were exploring the website at the same time and not just focusing on a single task.
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ReplyDeleteInteresting and relevant article. I was not aware exactly how many issues this website had. I cannot believe they released the website without proper testing, regardless of the deadline date. The government should have been better prepared, especially since ObamaCare causes so many disagreements already.
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