HealthCare.gov website Disaster: Could it have been avoided?

HealthCare.gov website Disaster: Could it have been avoided?

No, this disaster could have have been avoided. Mr. Obama and Ms. Sebelius, the leadership responsible for the construction of the HealthCare.gov website do not have the essential characteritistics required for complex software constructions endeavors of this nature to succeed.

Websites have been around for over 20 years. The topic is well known, the best practices to be used for business to construct web sites for their customers are well established; a search for website construction yields over 650,000,000 results. Most senior managers and software engineers involved with website construction have worked on at least a couple of websites that were plagued with serious usability and performance issues; guilty as charged. This is a well known problem and it should not have been a surprize to any of the senior technical and managerial personnel working on the HealthCare.gov webiste that its launch was premature. Although it might be practically impossible to prove, my experience suggest that the contractors working on the the construction of the HealthCare.gov webiste made it clear to the United States Government that the launch would be a disaster.

The United States of America is home to some of the most intensively competitive online markets. Companies like Amazon, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, and others are proof that the technologies available to construct websites and ensure their performance are well known. In fact, most, if not all, of the key technologies required to construct well performing websites were developed in the USA. The contractors working on the the construction of the HealthCare.gov webiste, like all of us in the community, are fully aware and able to use these technologies.

There are millions of software engineering personnel building very exciting websites in the USA; we avail ourselves of a very rich trove of software engineering construction methodologies known to be useful to support the construction of large and complex software engineering solutions, websites included. These methodologies offer the stakeholders very powerful early warning mechanisms to alert about impending schedule or budget slippages. Moreover, a more recent crop, known as agile methodologies, offer us effective mechanisms, not only to manage risk, but also to integrate new requirements to an on going project. The contractors working on the the construction of the HealthCare.gov webiste, like all of us in the community, are fully aware and able to use these methodologies.

Since we have the know how, the technologies, and the processes to build such websites, all indications are that the HealthCare.gov disaster could it have been avoided. Although these factors are needed to ensure the success of any software construction endeavor, they are not sufficient.

The software construction endeavor is imminently a social endeavor, integrating knowledge from many disciplines, particularly when constructing websites of the magnitude of HealthCare.gov. This social aspect of the endeavor requires a significant dosage of transparency and accountability across all layers of the organization. Last but not least, the software construction process is fraught with risk, unpredictable discoveries and events, demanding from the leadership unparalleled amounts of humility.

When faced with the disaster, Mr. Obama elected to tell us that he was not aware of the problems besetting the about to release to the public website; it is hard to believe that the person in control of the United States Government Situation Room was not aware that his signature legislation was about to get a big egg on its face. As in many instances in the past - Benghazi, IRS, NSA, Mr. Obama refuses to be accountable for his Administration failures.

Ms. Sebelius, addressing questions about her responsibility of the failure elected to say” “The majority of people calling for me to resign I would say are people who I don't work for, and who do not want this program to work in the first place”. Facing a circumstance requiring humility to admit her shortcomings,  Ms. Sebelius elected to tell the people who pay for her salary that she can careless for their opinions.

Mr. Obama and Ms. Sebelius represent the leadership responsible for the creation of the law and implementation of the Affordable Healthcare Act. Their performance in the handling of the HealthCare.gov website Disaster is one of many symptoms of their 5 years of hubris and belief that they can do as they please, without being accountable, and having to face the reality staring them in the face before the voters who elected them.

This kind of character does not bode well for leadership of complex software projects like the HealthCare.gov website. The disaster is not a surprise and could not have been avoided.