Obamacare
So the web site for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) didn’t go so well. That’s not really surprising, a web site for that many government departments, agencies and states is destined to failure. Everything will have to be RFP’d to different contractors and bidders. It will get so insanely complex that even getting the main job done will be next to impossible. I’m pretty impressed it launched at all.
I’ve done plenty of those RFPs and they aren’t fun. My favourite was one for the BC Government for a very simple site. But the amount of project management overhead was amazing. Three meetings a week to three different departments in two different cities, in person over the course of the project. I didn’t apply for that RFP.
Taking a quick look at the site, I’m slightly amused that a deep page in the site loads 64 external Javascript files and 13 CSS files.
But what’s more interesting is that it is just a web site. A lowly old web site is able to be the centre of attention and to be the corner stone of a Government policy to fix the US insane and dysfunctional health care system. A registration portal for millions upon millions of people to actually get health care. That’s pretty cool and not something you see every day.
And how often have we seen a head of state give a key address specifically about a web site. Again, pretty cool. Unless you worked on that site, eh CGI? The probably need more synergy.
It won’t fix the US health care system though.