Tech experts enlisted to help fix Obamacare website

[Hell Hath No Fury]

Source: CNN

CNN) -- Tech titans Oracle and Red Hat are joining the effort to "address the problems around HealthCare.gov," the federal website for Obamacare, according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

"As part of the 'Tech Surge,' we've added key personnel from the government and private sector, including expert engineers and technology managers. These dozens of people are strengthening and reinforcing the team we have working 24/7 to address the problems around HealthCare.gov," said Julie Bataille.

The experts come from Red Hat and Oracle, and include Michael Dickerson, a site reliability engineer on leave from Google, she said.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/31/us/obamacare-website-experts/index.html

[NoOneMan]

1. FFS, What's that going to cost?

Imagine all the jobs that could be created by just fixing all the shitty websites that should of never been built

[Puzzledtraveller]

2. And no heads rolled.

Some say that would make Obama look weak. I disagree, I think decisive housecleaning would make him look strong. But that's just me.

[DhhD]

3. CGI fails Obamacare at healthcare.gov. Glad to see take over to fix problem.

http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-obamacare-federal-exchange-cgi-contractor-20131018,0,650385.story#axzz2jKl8DaMz

[lordsummerisle]

4. Maybe they should

just hand the whole thing over to Amazon.com and let them take a small percentage.

[jtuck004]

5. Reportedly they turned down assistance offers from Amazon and Micro$oft. n/t

[jakeXT]

6. Google engineers tapped to revive HealthCare.gov

One team member is Michael Dickerson, who CMS said was on leave from Google.

"He has expertise in diving into any layer of the tech stack ... in order to deliver some of the world's most reliable online services," CMS spokeswoman Julie Bataille said.

Dickerson developed an election monitoring system for President Obama's tech-savvy re-election bid, according to his LinkedIn


....


"From what I can tell as an outsider, it's engineering fundamentals they're getting wrong," said Robin Purohit, CEO of the technology firm Clustrix.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/31/technology/enterprise/obamacare-site-tech-surge/index.html

[TexasTowelie]

10. Oracle is helping too.

Note the sentence in bold from this excerpt:

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison says the business software maker is helping the Obama administration fix the technological problems preventing people from signing up for government-mandated health insurance.

Ellison told shareholders at Oracle's annual meeting Thursday that the Redwood Shores, Calif. company is pitching in with other government contractors in an effort to make Healthcare.gov more reliable and secure. He didn't say how many Oracle engineers are addressing the issues that have crippled the website during its first month of operation.

"Most of us want to see our government operating efficiently and effectively and it is incumbent upon us to help them do that," Ellison said.

Exasperation with the buggy computers has been compounded by concerns that the website lacks the security measures needed to protect the sensitive information of people looking for insurance.

http://www.caller.com/news/2013/oct/31/oracle-helping-fix-obamas-healthcare-site/

Most of us? It seems like there are a few people working at Oracle that are anarchists.

[olddad56]

15. Oracle conculting Services will only make it worse.

[lark]

7. The website and phone system suck for red-staters!

I was just on there trying to find out about low cost options for my 28 year old son who can only find part time work as a waiter due to some stupid choices when he was 22 and can barely pay rent and put gas in his car. Can't do it on the website, chat said my son had to do it. When I pressed, they referred me to the toll free #. Called there and selected the option to speak to a rep., also agreed to take a survey after I had finished talking to a rep. Got no rep on the phone, was put thru to the survey immediately and it hung up on me soon as I finished and I still never got to speak to a rep. Grrr.

Of course, what makes me much more mad is FL refusing to increase Medicaid and screwing the poor people of this state. My son should be on Medicaid, last year his income didn't even reach the FPL, but FL in it's awesome stupidity, only covers people making less than 38% of FPL.

[SharonAnn]

8. Florida's really paying the price for Governor Scott being in office. It's a shame.

He is a greedy, stingy, cruel governor. I'm so sorry for Florida residents for this situation and many others that he has caused.

[Demeter]

9. All the King's Horses, and All the King's Men

[rickford66]

11. My view

Those of us who have worked on large software loads know that throwing more people on the problem won't help. I can't comment on any server problems but I can attest to the difficulty of getting two computers to talk to each other and this system must have hundreds of computers of all types and vintages trying to communicate. Thousands of different data bases, different formats, different inherent shortcuts etc. I've been on jobs where we had to get something working that previous contractors didn't finish or screwed up. Well getting up to speed isn't going to happen in a few days. I doubt the documentation is up to date, even if there is any. It's never done until way after the finish, so there's no roadmaps for a new person. I've only worked on flight simulators, commercial and military, some of which are networked to Navy and Army systems so go ahead and blast what I've said. Someone always does.

[penultimate]

13. I don't think they're just throwing more people at the problem

It seems to me that they are throwing a handful of more competent and experienced people at the problem

[rickford66]

14. Oh

A handful of people, even the best experts available, coming up to speed on millions of lines of code on many dozens of different computers with different databases. The new experts will also run into the stubbornness of the current s/w people to change or redesign their code. The job may get done on time but it is a monumental task. In cases like this "warm bodies" make managers happy for a while. I hope it gets done by November 30 but I only give it a 50/50 chance. Looking back, I think the designers of the Federal system should have planned for worst case, i.e. 50 states plus territories. I've been involved with bidding and working on jobs where we were to take over failed projects or incomplete work. It rarely ends well. Short deadlines make everything worse. I'm glad to be retired for the moment. I may go back to work soon because it's less stressful when you know you don't need the work.

[quadrature]

12. Malware-R-US

just effin wondeful