digiphile

It's rather off-putting to have a corrupt, amoral president who uses transparency as a weapon against his political opponents, lies, and doesn't show respect for civil servants.

I was the deputy director of the Sunlight Foundation and have covered the space for a decade. I tracked Trump's record on open government and documented it daily: https://sunlightfoundation.com/tracking-trumps-attacks-on-tr... It is, in other words, just my opinion, but a statement of fact. Moreover, bill in question is the OPEN Government Data Act. This president's record on transparency, accountability, ethics and civic engagement is atrocious. Therefore, these issues are directly related.

Do you have specific questions about the law that aren’t addressed here? https://e-pluribusunum.org/2018/12/20/senate-passes-evidence...

It does not. Only CFO Act agencies in the executive branch. But there is a bill to open up PACER.

I can think of any number of blog posts that pack more buzzwords per paragraph than this, but your experience may vary. http://mobile.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/05/d...

To your substantive point, no one skimped on reliability here. The content was pushed into Akamai precisely so it would always be available, quickly, to end users. Reducing servers in this context isn't skimping -- it's saving money by using modern Web tech. Developing this site also wasn't an option, as your comment implies: the law required its development and deployment. If you'd like public funds directed elsewhere, call your Congressional representatives.

As I understand it, that's correct: built using Github Enterprise internaly and then published publicly. There was code in public, on the Development Seed account, with respect to coding for the project; anyone can go look at the commits there. Your other points speak for themselves.

There's a lot to be learned from Recovery.gov, not all negative. In this case, the HHS CTO was referring to a change in the CMS itself, not the website(s) it controls. Getting code updated in the normal .gov contractor/sub-contractor model would generally take more time, both in terms of requirements and implementation.

So am I -- and a lot of other folks who cover tech & public policy!

This was definitely more than a minor mention :)

Thank you for the additional clarity on what you meant! Yes, I wrote this. I'd like to tackle a piece on the exchanges themselves too, at some point, but that would be another feature, not least because of the diversity of state approaches and the fact that the federal version isn't done yet.

Thank you for sharing the link to github. At the time of submission, the code wasn't available yet there.

Fair point. And ouch, I think. Just so it's clear, I'm not their colleague -- and the contractors in question weren't obligated to praise CMS. I'd hoped that readers would find the perspective of the writer useful, in addition to the comments of the principals, whose interests are obvious. Thank you for the feedback.

Is educating the uninsured about the provisions of a law that applied to them "propaganda?"

It may come as no surprise that Mullen cited the GDS team as an inspiration.

I didn't just interview the people who made those decisions. I've talked to dozens of federal and state CIOs over the years, along with many contractors and Web developers. The consensus amongst insiders and industry observers is that this approach and outcome are genuinely novel and innovative in the government space, which is why I wrote the feature to begin with, starting months ago.