I was just listening to the House of Representatives testimony from the contractors who built the Obamacare website (HealthCare.gov) that has had myriad user problems. The statement that cause me to sit up and take notice was that full system testing for this site began only two weeks before it was supposed to go live on this past October 1st ... see: CNN Story. Two weeks!?!
Having run two system software companies that built user
interfaces far less complicated than this Obamacare one, I can categorically state
that this level of a testing is ludicrously inadequate. Such a complicated system should have at
least three months of extensive inside (Alpha) testing of the totally
integrated software … after an equivalent amount of module testing (which I
also doubt really happened).
Then, in order to have the slightest chance of working
smoothly, this system should be turned over for six more months of end-user
(Beta) and insurance company testing with at least an additional month or two under
a simulated full load. If this were
done, then one might have a reasonable chance (fingers crossed) of a system
launch that would not bring embarrassment to Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the
Department of Health and Human Services.
Thus, instead of almost a year of testing after the modules had
been fully checked out and debugged (pants on fire!), this system had two
weeks! Yikes! And we taxpayers spent hundreds of millions of
dollars on the development of this piece of dreck. To launch a software product without the level
of testing described above is a criminal act propagated by charlatans of the
first order.
This surely will bring seas of shame on Secretary Sebelius and the
Obama administration … humility I doubt.
Afterthought: Little noticed (but probably more important) in this debacle about the Obamacare website failures are the security problems that abound around it. Much of the testing that was apparently not done should also have been directed at protecting all the confidential information being collected there ... and also insuring that cyber-squatters could not take advantage of this internet disarray to misdirect naive medical insurance seekers onto bogus websites ... see: Newsmax Story.
These cyber-security issues, in the end, may be the real straw that eventually breaks Obamacare's back.
Afterthought: Little noticed (but probably more important) in this debacle about the Obamacare website failures are the security problems that abound around it. Much of the testing that was apparently not done should also have been directed at protecting all the confidential information being collected there ... and also insuring that cyber-squatters could not take advantage of this internet disarray to misdirect naive medical insurance seekers onto bogus websites ... see: Newsmax Story.
These cyber-security issues, in the end, may be the real straw that eventually breaks Obamacare's back.
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