Macroeconomics in the Public Square: Part IIIB of My "The Economist as ?: The Public Square and Economists: Equitable Growth for October 16, 2013
Books I Read and Liked in the First Half of October 2013

Paul Ford: Open-Source Everything: The Moral of the Healthcare.gov Debacle: Noted

Paul Ford: Open-Source Everything: The Moral of the Healthcare.gov Debacle:

Healthcare.gov isn’t just a website; it’s more like a platform…. Visiting the site is like visiting a restaurant…. The kitchen is the back end, with all the databases and services. The contractor most responsible for the back end is CGI Federal. Apparently it’s this company’s part of the system that’s burning up under the load of thousands of simultaneous users. But it’s not just that the kitchen’s on fire. The alarm system doesn’t work either. The waiters can’t hear the screams of the cooks. It’s hard for outsiders to tell exactly what’s going on, because CGI Federal’s code is locked away out of sight, and the company hasn’t replied to press inquiries (including those from Bloomberg Businessweek). You can’t get a waiter’s attention to save your life…. Put charitably, the rollout of healthcare.gov has been a mess…

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