Obamacare Site Problem

Obamacare Site ProblemWhat do you do when you have a nation-wide website and hosting disaster? The Obama administration seems to think that the answer is in hiring more people. In order to deal with the current Obamacare website disaster, President Obama has told press today that a “tech surge” is needed to fix the issue. What is a tech surge? Basically, this means a massive hiring of more IT people.

Let's look at some reasons why this won't work.

  1. Presently, there are more than 55 IT contractors assigned to the Obamacare site.
  2. That's a lot of IT people for one website already.
  3. Let's point out the fact that those 55 people didn't get it right the first time.
  4. Contractors will be hired to work in all IT departments – and this project is overly crowded already.
  5. When more people are hired, the chain of command becomes shorter. This, in turn, creates confusion and complications.
  6. Was the problem really a lack of IT help? With 55 contractors on the job, that doesn't seem like a great evaluation.

But, maybe there's some kind of point the tech surge. Here are some possible reasons why this tactic may work.

  1. Someone might actually have a solution.
  2. Splitting Obamacare site tasks up into more teams may prove to be useful.
  3. Delegating is never a bad thing.
  4. Maybe the IT members just need to focus on one core issue instead of a lot of different issues.

And, we do have to admit, Obama site is working on ways to fix the problem. I'm just not sure that hiring a bunch of new tech people is the answer. As always, though, we can learn oh-so-much from mistakes that the government makes.

Obamacare Site Problem: Moral of the Story

If you have a gigantic website disaster, fix it. Don't hire more people to fix it, just make sure the people you're already paying can fix it. If those people can't solve the problem, fire them – and hire more. In the Obamacare case, hiring additional people seems like a really big waste of resources when all it really takes is one person that understands what they are doing.

It's also worth mentioning that the healthcare .gov site is really complex. This site doesn't just pull details from one source (as is the case with most sites), it fetches data from a number of different sources. Plus, all of this data is being transferred in real-time, which is a really time-consuming and system draining method of setting up such a massive website.

In short, it might not take a tech surge to fix this issue. Maybe, just maybe, it's going to take a better overall website – one that's much simpler.

Obamacare Site Problem: Some Offers

Interestingly, a number of website firms have come forward to offer the government free project help. So far, though, none of these firms have been taken up on their offers. Seemingly, the government prefers to hire more people than to gain free help from U.S.-based firms.

What is your take on this problem? Is the Obamacare website doomed? Is hiring more people the answer?

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