Re:HealthCare.gov: It almost worked
by hga on Saturday January 04, 2014 @06:44PM
(#7013565)
It took a bit more than that. The person in charge and Deloitte agreed on the ruthless simplicity you've outlined, and which we can also judge by the short timelines, 6 months to design and build, 3 months for system testing and fixes. Implicitly, your summation also tells us requirements were frozen early enough in the project.
Even if HHS/CMS had assigned a single person to be full time in charge of Healthcare.gov, it's vanishingly unlikely they would have had the authority to take such measures and make them stick, refuse requirements changes from above past a certain point, etc. etc., even if they'd known to do so, or were smart enough to listen to the contractors.
Oh, yeah, Deloitte was the general/prime/whatever contractor, CMS took on that role until "fired" in the 3rd week in August. CMS simply didn't have the skills to do that (in the Federal government we're told only the Pentagon does, and only for "medium sized" weapons projects).
Even if HHS/CMS had assigned a single person to be full time in charge of Healthcare.gov, it's vanishingly unlikely they would have had the authority to take such measures and make them stick, refuse requirements changes from above past a certain point, etc. etc., even if they'd known to do so, or were smart enough to listen to the contractors.
Oh, yeah, Deloitte was the general/prime/whatever contractor, CMS took on that role until "fired" in the 3rd week in August. CMS simply didn't have the skills to do that (in the Federal government we're told only the Pentagon does, and only for "medium sized" weapons projects).