Perhaps this is part of the problem, but this company had a track record of ineptitude even before they were hired for the ACA.

This makes those toilet seats and screwdriver deals of the past look good!

The important thing is to protect Michelle's friends and Barry's Christmas guests. About the money, why worry about it? It's government money. It doesn't cost anyone anything!

Our Idiocracy at work.

You forgot the malfunctioning, complex websites, the yearly updating, the modifications of contracts, contracting officers that rule their kingdoms, or queendoms with an iron fist and don't always follow the rules. Then there is always the 'our site screwed up so your payment will be late' BS.

Yes, the standard engineering rule is "choose two."

Wow, you are tough! I like that. I have always said pick two, but you can't have all three. :) Government contracts are nothing but trouble.... Voluminous paper work, ridiculous delivery schedules, poor engineering and communication and the pay is always slow too.

I work in IT for a living - having done so professionally for more than 15 years, and yes - there is no way this site should have cost what it did. I know of several software companies in my area that could have delivered a working site in two years that was fully functional and secure and done it profitably for 1/100th or less of the costs already racked up on this project.

Just another reason why we should be VERY afraid anyone says "I'm from the Government and I'm here to help" (Ronald Reagan)

The only solution is to federalize all web development companies. We can use the rationale that they used for making TSA a federal agency. We need the service because govt. said so. And there is no one to sue when things screw up horribly. If you don't like it, don't fly.

I'm being facetious, of course.

Seriously, there is no software on the planet that is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. For something like healthcare.gov it absolutely should have been fully open-source, and even developed by the FOSS community. It would have been free, and on-time.

But that would only happen if the government were run like a business. It all falls apart when you try to apply logic to this situation.

Keep in mind that the (very visible) web addresses of whitehouse.gov and fcc.gov have successfully used an open-source CMS called Drupal (www.drupal.org) which is free and has a tremendous developer community, both paid and volunteer.

Why didn't they use such rock-solid software for healthcare.gov???? Simple: crony capitalism. I challenge anyone to prove me wrong.

The government is always an annoying customer, constantly changing the requirements and schedules, without regard to the consequences or cost. Part of my military career was in contract management, as a research and development agent. My biggest challenge was having to tell the customer (the targeted user of the product) that you can have the product good, fast, or cheap, so pick one. Changing requirements after the initial design studies always extends delivery time and cost. I wasn't very popular, as the higher ups expected me to give the usual "yessir, three bags full" answer, and when I instead told them I'd be happy to schedule the Congressional hearing on why things were late and expensive I heard some surprising things about my lineage. I won most of those battles, but it also assured I would never see flag rank.

Information flows upward until it meets policy/politics going down at which point policy trumps information. "Don't nobody tell me no bad news!" Case in point: the Challenger O-rings where United Tech had to fly a vice president to the cape to sign off on flight readiness because the grunt engineers would not.

This is just throwing good money after bad. Except it's our money. I guess the logic is that if they fail, keep throwing money at it until they succeed? Sounds way too close to AS to me.

I don't wish to defend these people but we may well have an example here of the customer screwing up the supplier. If I remember correctly the supplier here told the administration multiple times that the site should not go live as it was not finished. I can well imagine the difficulties of working for a bunch of twits like the current administration, who no doubt kept changing the requirements as time and political expediency dictated. On the other hand, these people have done this sort of work for years and should have known what they were getting in to.

It's wprse than an annoying relative. We're paying it millions to stay around or at least we were.
They are an example of the Peter Principle except for companies. They rose to their level of incompetence and stuck there being paid and being in the way.
Actually it's worse. They represent the Peter Principle and cronyism all rolled into one. If we look hard enough, we might even find nepotism thrown in.