A month after its launch Obamacare website Healthcare.gov is still plagued with problems and leading politicians are calling for it to be shutdown until it is fixed.
On CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday , both California Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, and Michigan Congressman Mike Rogers, a Republican, said that the Healthcare.gov website should go offline until it is fully functional.
While the politicians have a hard time expressing the exact technological reasons for the failure of the Obamacare healthcare.gov website, they agree the roll out was a disaster.
Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer explains the technology project failure in simple terms, "There may be a lesson there if those involved could spend less time refining the talking points and more time actually trying to make things work."
Why technology projects fail
The underlying failure of many technology projects are decisions that are made for reasons other than technology. The Obamacare Healthcare.gov gives us many examples of non technology issues that plagued the project.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has appeared before congress to apologize for the failures of the healthcare,gov website. Sebelius stated that, "In an ideal world, there would have been a lot more testing."
Sebelius claimed that HHS was unable to test the Obamacare Healthcare.gov website extensively because of a legally mandated October 1st launch date. On Sunday morning, Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace addressed the October 1st deadline reporting that “It turns out that is just not true.”
A question that will be asked many times in the future, is why not delay the opening of the site in order to do the needed testing?
Technology specialists may have some say in how things are done, but rarely have the ultimate say in what gets implemented and when. Whether it is building a website,or implementing a new technology, you will often find a best practices guide on how to proceed. Sadly, the decision makers, from small business managers to politicians and presidents often ignore best practices.
The Obamacare Healthcare.gov website is another example where talking heads try to explain the failures of technology. Misunderstood buzzwords will be scattered about to blame the failure on technology issues rather than poor management and ignoring basic concepts and best practices.
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