Posted on 10/04/2013 7:11:08 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversaw development of the site, declined to make any of its IT experts available for interviews. CGI Group Inc, the Canadian contractor that built HealthCare.gov, is "declining to comment at this time," said spokeswoman Linda Odorisio.
Five outside technology experts interviewed by Reuters, however, say they believe flaws in system architecture, not traffic alone, contributed to the problems.
For instance, when a user tries to create an account on HealthCare.gov it prompts the computer to load an unusually large amount of files and software, overwhelming the browser, experts said.
If they are right, then just bringing more servers online, as officials say they are doing, will not fix the site.
"Adding capacity sounds great until you realize that if you didn't design it right that won't help," said Bill Curtis, chief scientist at CAST, a software quality analysis firm, and director of the Consortium for IT Software Quality. "The architecture of the software may limit how much you can add on to it. I suspect they'll have to reconfigure a lot of it."
One possible cause of the problems is that hitting "apply" on HealthCare.gov causes 92 separate files, plug-ins and other mammoth swarms of data to stream between the user's computer and the servers powering the government website, said Matthew Hancock, an independent expert in website design. He was able to track the files being requested through a feature in the Firefox browser.
Of the 92 he found, 56 were JavaScript files, including plug-ins that make it easier for code to work on multiple browsers (such as Microsoft Corp's Internet Explorer and Google Inc's Chrome) and let users upload files to HealthCare.gov.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
It’s great to know your privacy has now been breeched on an international level.
NSA spyware "package".
A year ago I would have laughed at that comment. Now, I would be surprised
if NSA is not monitoring.
I agree. I think it’s working just fine.
The best IT solutions that Canada has to offer.
I guess since Canadians like to come here for health care, it’s only fitting to go there for socialism.
Thanks for buying American though, Obama. I just have a 3-letter word for you...J-O-B-S.
This is pretty interesting, too .....
“A portion of the website of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) was apparently hacked as long as two months ago. SAMHSA is an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). HHS also runs the new Obamacare insurance marketplace, Healthcare.gov.”
Having both houses won’t stop Obama’s veto unless it’s a supermajority, which is almost impossible to get.
The insurance companies were told to cover pre-existing conditions, and were promised they’d get millions more in young, healthy signing up. When that part of the plan fails, the insurance companies could go out of business or raise rates further. Which will help the argument for single payer.
At the same time we at least have another argument now that government can’t do this sort of thing well.
But the difficult fight and unintended consequences loom large for the foreseeable future. We don’t have a clear path for overturning Obamacare and avoiding single payer.
What’s hilarious is no one noticed the hack for months. Which shows you how popular and useful these things are that the government wastes our money on.
The system overload message would be part of the design specification.
Also, however... the design spec could say that they want essentially a switch to turn that message on and off.
So, the first few days they have their overload message turned on so they can say people are flocking to the site.
Then, when they choose they can have the site start “performing better”.
However, they’re probably not that smart.
They probably have a monstrous pile of “sort of works” code... because when the government’s payin’, that’s what you get, all except for a few essential systems, like tracking who they want to track, who they want money from, etc.
Who is supplying the backend and the apps for this POS?
QA testing was obviously not adequately performed if the site is overloading the user’s browser with 92 plug-ins.
Like the bill itself, the web site was rushed and we’re seeing the result.
Yet no one in the media is holding Obama responsible for this cluster f***
Imagine if this happened under GWB - the MSM would be in hysterics right now.
Yeah! Agree, Don't tell a d*mn thing on how to fix it!
Sounds like a potential plan of action for the Obamacare website .... let’s see, they could sell arugula, cigarettes, and pictures of Bo.
Sounds like they are preloading far too much JavaScript for the forms, whether users need it or not, instead of relying on sufficient servers and proper caching and mirroring. In other words, typical Democrat shitstorm.
I think you may have hit the nail on the head. They wanted to have the SC to run against. As it turned out, all they needed was a little fraud.
My theory is they just recently sabatoged the web site because they know they won’t have many takers. And since the SC gave them what they “wanted” they created a second excuse.
If all those illegals are made legal in anyway, I’m scared sh!tless that the single payer will finally come to America.”
We should all be very concerned about this. As I understand, it’s being worked on behind closed doors now by some House members including Ted Poe in Houston.
Suspect they think everyone will be worried about the government shutdown and Poe and troops aren’t going to let this crisis time go to waste.
lmao
okay......
1 - canadian firm doing us hcare software?
2 - using 56 javascript applets? java is not secure or safe. i have javascript off.
3. downloads 92 files onto your pc? can we talk security issue here?
4. front end overwhelmed by this evertime someone hits “apply”?
does anyone see that people could just type in fake crap and overwhelm the site?
good grief fedgov is stupider than dirt.
THis is what you’d expect when the “Chief Technology Officer of the United States” has a degree in public policy and experience confined to politics.
I was not going to comment on what was wrong with the system (and this article only touches the surface of the list of problems), nor will I comment on sensible fixes. I’ll just celebrate for as long as this system crashes and burns.
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