Friday, January 10, 2014

My #3 Cyber Privateer Fantasy League Team Member Predicted Today's Headline on December 13, 2013

Jeffrey L. Walker, #3 pick for my Cyber Privateer Fantasy League Team (click the link on the right for my team selections), predicted today's Washington Post Headline (see the story here) and the selection of Accenture to fix Healthcare.gov way back on December 13, 2013. Here's Jeff's email to me last year:

Lots of issues....this is my professional opinion

1.  Doing it right the first time...always the best choice....IBM or Accenture would have been my choice instead of the unknown, non-American group of contractors.

2.  IBM and Accenture could run a project this large and complex which has technical difficulties galore in the categories of how-to-handle-large-volumes (probably higher volume than any current web-site...even Google) and industry complexity (insurance is a tough, complex industry with lots of inside knowledge required to build insurance systems)...but IBM and Accenture have industry practices in insurance.

3.  Up front political pressure. Neither IBM nor Accenture could afford a failure...wouldn't matter as much to littler hodgepodge of contractors it appears they chose.

4.  3 1/2 years is a tight schedule for system of this complexity.

5.  Now the rub. If the system was architected incorrectly, then it may not be repairable. I wouldn't know without much more data.

6.  If architecture is passable, they can probably fix it and continue to make it better...but it may take years.

7.  Can they fix it this year? Can't say as I don't have the data. Sounds like they are taking the right approach from the Times article, but the "waiting room" concept is a sign that their are architecture problems beyond repair and requiring a redo. A "waiting room" is a way of buying time...just like a line a Disneyland is a way to dealing with too many customers for a ride that does not have the capacity to handle the customer flow. (Difference is that people who see the line go to another ride or don't ride at all.....that strategy isn't going to work with mandated deadlines for sign-ups.)

8.  Disaster control. Obama administration doesn't know how to do that well as evidenced by all the other problems they've dealt with.

9.  Insurance industry support. Big political problem that might be hard to deal with. Delaying everything one year by not allowing insurance companies to change plans takes a load off the system, but creates enormous exception situations that I doubt if they can handle.

Tough problem they created themselves by not hiring the best people with the best motivations to succeed.
Jeff, ya got it right. Accenture and IBM would NEVER let this project fail. IMHO, TenFold technology could have nailed this right out of the chute.

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