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Old 10-23-2013, 01:51 PM   #541
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In the world I came from, (an actual business that had to make money) there were things called "product readiness reviews", stress testing, pre-testing, launch reviews, robust-ness reviews and so on.

Committees would play devils advocate, have their elderly relatives try to use the product, simulate glitches/problems and anticipate "what could go wrong", even 'try to break it' reviews. If you didn't have answers to 1000 questions, YOU DIDN'T GO TO MARKET!!

Catastrophic to miss your window, but even more catastrophic to launch a product that wasn't ready for the public.

Then again, we were using our own money.

Three years to prep for this? If these clowns didn't review these things, I'm worried...if they did, I'm even more worried!
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Old 10-23-2013, 02:02 PM   #542
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Originally Posted by marko View Post
In the world I came from, (an actual business that had to make money) there were things called "product readiness reviews", stress testing, pre-testing, launch reviews, robust-ness reviews and so on.

Committees would play devils advocate, have their elderly relatives try to use the product, simulate glitches/problems and anticipate "what could go wrong", even 'try to break it' reviews. If you didn't have answers to 1000 questions, YOU DIDN'T GO TO MARKET!!

Catastrophic to miss your window, but even more catastrophic to launch a product that wasn't ready for the public.

Then again, we were using our own money.

Three years to prep for this? If these clowns didn't review these things, I'm worried...if they did, I'm even more worried!
From some of what I've read, there wasn't a single complete run through of the user experience before it went live. Gov't can get away with a lot that private industry would be bankrupted by.

Obamacare Crashes Months in Coming Not Easily Repaired - Businessweek

Quote:
HHS was making changes to the exchanges hours before they were scheduled to go live, Sanjay Singh, chief executive officer at software contractor hCentive Inc., said in a Sept. 30 phone interview.
Singh, whose company did exchange work for an insurer working with the federal site, said at the time that his employees were rushing to accommodate “a late-night patch” that the department had just added.
“There was not enough time to do end-to-end testing,” he said. “The system keeps changing, so how do you run the tests?”
Singh nonetheless said on Sept. 30 that he thought the exchanges were ready to open, with basic functions available. Insurers and government were counting on low volume initially to give them more time to complete development, he said.
I wonder how that's working out for them?
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Old 10-23-2013, 05:45 PM   #543
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The government wants us to trust them with administering our health care when they can't even put up a web site after three years and hundreds of millions of dollars.

Worse still is this bit of news Thousands Of Consumers Get Insurance Cancellation Notices Due To Health Law Changes - Kaiser Health News

Also anyone see Sibelius interview with Sanjay Gupta:

"I think that we talked about having testing going forward, and if we had an ideal situation and could have built a product in, you know, a five-year period of time, we probably would have taken five years."

As an ex IT programmer/manager that had me scratching my head...there are milestones which have to be met not kind of sort of but go no go dates.

This though was my favorite exchange :

SEBELIUS: We've asked all of our contractors to look at the their teams on the ground and bring in their absolute A team, and I'm confident that that is happening every day.

GUPTA: The contractor didn't do such a great job so far.

SEBELIUS: Well, I ..

GUPTA: And why didn't they bring their A team in in the first place?

SEBELIUS: I can't tell you why they..

GUPTA: Why are we saying in three weeks now, bring your A team into this whole equation?

SEBELIUS: We have -- hope that they had their A team on the table, but I -- I am talking to CEOs and urging them to make sure that we have the talent that they have available.

Really sad from every angle.
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Old 10-23-2013, 05:54 PM   #544
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From some of what I've read, there wasn't a single complete run through of the user experience before it went live. Gov't can get away with a lot that private industry would be bankrupted by...
Testing? Well, there was testing according to a Washington Post article.

Days before the launch of President Obama’s online health *insurance marketplace, government officials and contractors tested a key part of the Web site to see whether it could handle tens of thousands of consumers at the same time. It crashed after a simulation in which just a few hundred people tried to log on simultaneously.

Despite the failed test, federal health officials plowed ahead.

See: Health insurance exchange launched despite signs of serious problems - The Washington Post
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Old 10-23-2013, 05:57 PM   #545
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I wonder how that's working out for them?
Apparently it is working just fine so far. No individual consequences for anyone yet. Maybe some uncomfortable interviews, but that just provides a platform to tell everyone just how hard all this is. My bosses were always full of sympathetic words when I did that.
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Old 10-23-2013, 06:52 PM   #546
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The government wants us to trust them with administering our health care when they can't even put up a web site after three years and hundreds of millions of dollars.
...
GUPTA: Why are we saying in three weeks now, bring your A team into this whole equation? SEBELIUS: We have -- hope that they had their A team on the table, but I -- I am talking to CEOs and urging them to make sure that we have the talent that they have available. Really sad from every angle.
Good thing it will actually be medical organizations reimbursed by private insurers administering our health care, then, isn't it? The government is organizing (for varying values of 'organize') one purchasing mechanism for private medical insurance, and setting minimum performance requirements for compliant private medical insurance.

As far as the web site goes, I eagerly await the solution to a set of complex technical issues. I am quite certain that some combination of media newsreaders and bureaucrats who have their e-mail printed out so they can read will eventually be able to identify and specify corrective measures for design of the web servers, back-end database systems and authentication servers involved. I do suspect that they may need to bring Congress into the loop at some point, as I know of no better authority on database throughput optimization than certain select Congressmen. When TPS is on the line, they are your go-to people.
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Old 10-23-2013, 07:04 PM   #547
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...............................................

As far as the web site goes, I eagerly await the solution to a set of complex technical issues. I am quite certain that some combination of media newsreaders and bureaucrats who have their e-mail printed out so they can read will eventually be able to identify and specify corrective measures for design of the web servers, back-end database systems and authentication servers involved. I do suspect that they may need to bring Congress into the loop at some point, as I know of no better authority on database throughput optimization than certain select Congressmen. When TPS is on the line, they are your go-to people.
I would agree 100%. Every time Megacorp had serious IT performance issues, Congress was the absolute authority. Who better to understand queueing!

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Old 10-23-2013, 07:14 PM   #548
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Congress may does not know much about Web software, but it is good at calling the culprits up to congressional hearings.

In the past, when I was bored, I would watch a few of these sessions on C-SPAN, and though some of these congressmen look like goons (from both parties, I should add), the thought that they would make some of the responsible officials squirm in their seat might prevent others from causing similar future debacles.

Or am I too optimistic?
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Old 10-23-2013, 07:19 PM   #549
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Here is an interesting link to an article that says most large software projects fail:
Healthcare.gov website 'didn't have a chance in hell' - Computerworld
" A majority of large IT projects fail to meet deadlines, are over budget and don't make their users happy. Such is the case with Healthcare.gov."
There have been many books detailing these issues with big projects in the past. The article points out that big rollouts nearly always fail as well. The folks developing the site never took the message of the mythical man month to heart. (Published in 1975). Among its lessons is that adding more bodies to a project just delays it. We have not yet learned how to develop large software projects in general either in government or industry.
Issues range from how to verify identity, perhaps they should have required id scans from day 1, for example, not go the questions route.
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Old 10-23-2013, 08:02 PM   #550
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Here is an interesting link to an article that says most large software projects fail:
Healthcare.gov website 'didn't have a chance in hell' - Computerworld
" A majority of large IT projects fail to meet deadlines, are over budget and don't make their users happy. Such is the case with Healthcare.gov."
There have been many books detailing these issues with big projects in the past. The article points out that big rollouts nearly always fail as well. The folks developing the site never took the message of the mythical man month to heart. (Published in 1975). Among its lessons is that adding more bodies to a project just delays it. We have not yet learned how to develop large software projects in general either in government or industry.
Issues range from how to verify identity, perhaps they should have required id scans from day 1, for example, not go the questions route.

How true! The company I retired from as since spent well over $100 million on a custom ERP system (with a preeminent software vendor) and it has failed. They recently cancelled the roll out and will be going back to industry specific software vendors. What a shame.
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Old 10-23-2013, 08:12 PM   #551
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This though was my favorite exchange :

SEBELIUS: We've asked all of our contractors to look at the their teams on the ground and bring in their absolute A team, and I'm confident that that is happening every day.

GUPTA: The contractor didn't do such a great job so far.

SEBELIUS: Well, I ..

GUPTA: And why didn't they bring their A team in in the first place?

SEBELIUS: I can't tell you why they..

GUPTA: Why are we saying in three weeks now, bring your A team into this whole equation?

SEBELIUS: We have -- hope that they had their A team on the table, but I -- I am talking to CEOs and urging them to make sure that we have the talent that they have available.

Really sad from every angle.
The A Team
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Old 10-23-2013, 08:41 PM   #552
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I am trying to upload a .pdf file of my daughter's Employee Coverage Tool that the ACA application asked that we do (to complete her application). I have been trying to upload this into the website where it asks, but I can't seem to get the file to upload. I select it as the site says, then hit upload and nothing happens. Anybody have a problem like this?

Pop up blocker is off, all cache cleared, etc. Using Win 8 with Firefox. Tried with IE with no luck.
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Old 10-23-2013, 08:45 PM   #553
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I am trying to upload a .pdf file of my daughter's Employee Coverage Tool that the ACA application asked that we do (to complete her application). I have been trying to upload this into the website where it asks, but I can't seem to get the file to upload. I select it as the site says, then hit upload and nothing happens. Anybody have a problem like this?

Pop up blocker is off, all cache cleared, etc. Using Win 8 with Firefox. Tried with IE with no luck.
Convert to a jpeg file, use your snipping tool.
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Old 10-23-2013, 09:29 PM   #554
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Convert to a jpeg file, use your snipping tool.
Really, is that what the site requires? I mean, they request a file.
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Old 10-24-2013, 06:22 AM   #555
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Really, is that what the site requires? I mean, they request a file.
Actually I had it the other way, for ID a PDF was accepted, for income only a jpeg would upload. Is that the way it is supposed to work I doubt it. Your mileage may vary.

By the way I can enroll as of today, but I get the blank letter about how much subsidy I will get.
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Old 10-24-2013, 07:03 AM   #556
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I pity the fool...
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Old 10-24-2013, 07:15 AM   #557
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To those folks quoting premiums and cost share numbers from hc.gov, dont you have to actual select then ENROLL in a specific plan before the site tells you what your subsidies (if any) are?

If so, once you have clicked the button or whatever to ENROLL in a specific plan, how painful is it to change your plan? (Eg Do you need to start the application process all over again?)
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Old 10-24-2013, 07:38 AM   #558
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To those folks quoting premiums and cost share numbers from hc.gov, dont you have to actual select then ENROLL in a specific plan before the site tells you what your subsidies (if any) are?

If so, once you have clicked the button or whatever to ENROLL in a specific plan, how painful is it to change your plan? (Eg Do you need to start the application process all over again?)
No, as soon as I could see the plans the discount was shown. YMMV.

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Old 10-24-2013, 08:19 AM   #559
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No, as soon as I could see the plans the discount was shown. YMMV.

MRG
Hmmm, interesting. I'm referring to healthcare.gov and not a state-sponsored exchange. IIRC after getting the notification that my application was approved I logged in, could see the plans and the pricing but dont recall seeing any clear indication as to what the subsidies were.

I say "IIRC" because as I login now, my application seems to have gone missing. I'm so glad that the gub'mint thinks that my time isnt worth anything.
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Old 10-24-2013, 08:21 AM   #560
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I'm using healthcare.gov as well. I saw the 'list' price along side what it would cost me. I didn't see tax credits broken out from subsidies.

I've had apps 'go missing' in my case it showed up shortly.

Best wishes,

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