For months media sources have been criticizing the glitches in the new HealthCare.gov website, and rightly so! With a $600 million price tag you would think the website would have been designed, tested and functioning at 100% before being launched for public use. As a taxpayer and local web developer here’s a couple of things I would like to criticize and address about this web Cadillac of sorts.
First of all lets think about the number $600 million… SERIOUSLY! That’s more than a half billion dollars for a website. The only thought that comes to mind – no matter how complex, and no matter how many web developers worked on the project – is Unacceptable! A couple of million dollars, heck, even $10 million dollars might be acceptable considering the fact that its a government project, but $600 million dollars for ANY website is insanity!
I’m especially not so happy to know that as tax payer I am helping to foot this ridiculous bill for something that was done half-assed.
The latest news report at NPR states that as of December 1st the website “is now working smoothly for most users”. Most users? The press release goes on to state:
“According to a progress report issued by the Department of Health & Human Services, engineers, database architects and contractors have deployed hundreds of software fixes and hardware upgrades that have “measurably improved the consumer experience” over the past month.
The site is now working more than 90 percent of time, according to White House metrics, up from less than half the time in early November.
Zients said the site will now support 800,000 consumer visits a day and 50,000 concurrent users on the site.”
I’m simply amazed that our government invests more than a half of a billion dollars with a company that designs broken websites. It’s not like our government, or anyone for that matter, didn’t know the Affordable Care Act was going to need a venue for people to register. Further, I never heard anything about there being a time crunch to develop the website because we’ve known about ObamaCare for a very long time.
All I really have to say (vent about) is that you could never convince me that $600 million dollars is acceptable for any website – PERIOD!
On a positive note, I am happy to report that I recently visited, registered, and successfully submitted my application for health care. It did take six (6) pushes of the pretty green button before it accepted my application, but it ultimately did work.
Heck, for $600 million I could have designed a site that accepted applications on the “first” push of the button…