The US federal government employs over 4 million people. The employees at the CDC probably never heard of the problems with the obamacare website, let alone had the chance to learn any lessons from the people involved.
> They're supposed to be the best we have. They won a vote after all.
These mistakes aren't made by the politicians you elected. They're made by civic servants. Civic servants are employed from the pool of people who apply. And the belief that "only stupid people work in government" perpetuates this exact problem - because it ensures anyone who's capable of good work stays far away from work that could make the government more effective.
I think the right approach to problems like this is to route these decisions through dedicated government departments who are qualified to do IT work. The real question is why the US Digital Services (which knows what they're doing) wasn't contacted to create this website.
Well thanks for calling me out as to not knowing who the hell is responsible.
I agree with your approach... we need experts, who will NOT bid to one company, who will NOT accept one-sided terms.
These are fat government contracts we're talking about... the company should have to take 100% responsibility to deliver a working website at cost.
If companies mismanage and fail, they should go out of business, and another company can try... instead of us paying for it, incentivizing bad behavior.
> Well thanks for calling me out as to not knowing who the hell is responsible.
To be fair, you were also partially right. Government departments usually have elected representatives who are officially in charge, so there's someone the public can blame when things like this happen. At least thats true here in Australia and in the UK - I'm not totally sure if it works the same way in the US.
That said, the politicians usually don't get too involved in on-the-ground details like this. They have other things to worry about (like the next election). And the civil servants will usually understand the issues on the ground much better, because they spend their whole career dealing with them. (Unlike politicians who come and go.)
Blaming the politicians involved is like blaming the CEO when bugs happen in software. (Or in this case, when bugs from many years ago are discovered.) Technically yeah, they're ultimately responsible. But the actual mistake was the fault of the people on the ground.
The CEO analogy is a great one, I'll be stealing that, so thank you.
HN seems to have greatly differing opinions on where the responsibility lies when it comes to private businesses, ie: Volkswagen scandal, Uber scandal, et al
> They're supposed to be the best we have. They won a vote after all.
These mistakes aren't made by the politicians you elected. They're made by civic servants. Civic servants are employed from the pool of people who apply. And the belief that "only stupid people work in government" perpetuates this exact problem - because it ensures anyone who's capable of good work stays far away from work that could make the government more effective.
I think the right approach to problems like this is to route these decisions through dedicated government departments who are qualified to do IT work. The real question is why the US Digital Services (which knows what they're doing) wasn't contacted to create this website.