Theory Behind ObamaCare’s Website Failure
This is Richard Posner at the Becker/Posner blog:
Because of the salary levels that skilled computer engineers command, it is difficult for government agencies to hire and retain the most highly qualified computer experts. The logical solution would be outsourcing to computer service providers, and that was the solution chosen for the website of the Affordable Care Act. But when the bureaucrats lack high-level technical skills, it is difficult for them to select and supervise an outside provider of high-level technical services. The bureaucracy needs to be able, at the least, to retain a computer consultant who can steer the agency to a computer provider that will meet the agency’s needs and who can supervise the provider to make sure it delivers in timely fashion. But to find and negotiate with and supervise a consultant of the requisite skill and experience itself requires a high level of technical ability again rarely found in government agencies. The combination of modest income with job security and other benefits tends not to be attractive to the highest-quality workers in elite, highly compensated fields. Bureaucracy tends to work well only when it is performing relatively simple, highly familiar tasks, far removed from the entrepreneurial risk common in highly competitive fields…
This is a depressing reflection, because bureaucracy is a function of complexity, its pathologies are amplified by complexity — and complexity is growing throughout our governmental and commercial institutions.
There is a really interesting article about this topic published by The Economist some time back. It was talking about the problems with healthcare.gov website. According to them the people in charge of creating the webpage are not the best in their fields. The article made an interesting argument. It stated that the reason the webpage was faulty was primarily because the best web designers are in Silicon Valley making several thousand dollars and there is always demand for more. Those companies are not comparable with the government. They pay more, faster, and provide more benefits to the employees than the government does. The article argues that it is hard for healthcare.gov to keep up with other websites because there is no competent web designer that would do an state of the art job with a miniscule pay.
So instead the substitute with incompetent web designers with a miniscule pay?
The article you reference, but not your comment, is clearly wrong. The government contracted for the website. The company that won the supposed bidding process is responsible for doing whatever it takes to provide the product they agreed to provide. It has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with government wages and benefits. Healthcare.gov failed because the contracting process is flawed, not because of the inability of the government to hire and retain IT talent. The hard questions should be for those responsible for contracting.
“The bureaucracy needs to be able, at the least, to retain a computer consultant who can steer the agency to a computer provider that will meet the agency’s needs and who can supervise the provider to make sure it delivers in timely fashion.”
Which they have proved time and time again that they are unable to accomplish.
On time? Absolutely not!
“The particular problem of American bureaucracy is the entanglement of government bureaucracies with legislatures in a setting of rivalrous bureaucracies. The recent fiasco of the website for the Affordable Care Act is an important example.”
This is a consistent problem. Unfortunately, no change in sight.
We need a president who will dismantle and rebuild the administration
“But when the bureaucrats lack high-level technical skills, it is difficult for them to select and supervise an outside provider of high-level technical services.”
This certainly didn’t stop them from trying.
They never realize when they’re in over their heads.
Until they are drowning.
Their inability to select and supervise the outside provider is exactly what caused the blunder that is healthcare.gov.
Well when the government can only make compensation offers that attract the mid tier of web designers, that exactly the kind of work you will get out of them.
The reward goes to the lowest bidder
Whats worse healthcare or jets?
“A particular difficulty in federal bureaucracies is the extraordinary difficulty of actually firing surplus or underperforming employees.”
They share this issue with education.
This problem is a lot more common that you might think. Everything from CEO’s to cashiers who have seniority.
“As a result it’s usually too much of a bother actually to fire an underperforming or superfluous worker, and instead the agency will find him or her what is called a “parking place,” meaning a job in which the employee can do no harm, be out of the way.”
Well this explains it. Have they moved to treating most government officials this way as well?
Great post, John!
You think it’s hard to hire enough of those bright, young, healthy, single and childfree nerds like Gates, Jobs, Wozniak and Zuckerberg now? Just wait until they fully realize how much of their earnings will go to dumb, old, sick, hypochondriac, breeders in the form of Obamacare premiums!
Government can’t retain highly qualified computer experts? Guess that means that NSA is staffed with second rate nobodies.
The main contractor for this website had close ties to Valerie Jarett in the White House.
This contractor also had been fired by Canada for bad performance in creating a national gun registry.
Seems to me we have a President who does not sweat the details. George W Bush was the same way in his handling of Katrina and the early occupation of Iraq.