BBE/IE Paul Light

[tnu]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/24/the-government-didnt-do-a-great-job-with-healthcare-gov-a-private-company-mightve-been-worse/

During the circular firing squad of contractors, politicians and bureaucrats blaming each other for the HealthCare.gov meltdown, one question has repeatedly surfaced: Who was really in charge of overseeing the dozens of contractors making pieces of the giant system? Who was ultimately responsible for ensuring it all functioned well together?

Much of the blame has fallen upon CGI Federal, the contractor that was paid the most for its work, and was charged with constructing the backend of the site. But CGI points out — loudly — that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was actually the "lead systems integrator," which is a technical term for the entity responsible for wrangling projects so big that they amount to a "system of systems."

By many accounts, CMS didn't play that role very well, delivering requirements so late that testing didn't begin until a couple weeks before the Web site was supposed to launch. And now, since they all say they delivered on their scopes of work as promised, no one contractor can be held accountable for the fact that the site still failed. Some people, like New York University contracting expert Paul Light, think keeping the management in-house was a key point of failure.

So would it have made sense to have one contractor actually in charge of pulling the whole thing together? The problem is, the federal government has tried outsourcing that role before — with equally disastrous results.

"There was a trend about 10 years ago towards hiring a contractor to be the lead systems integrator, and the government got burned in a couple of famous cases," says Dan Gordon, who served as administrator of Federal Procurement Policy until January 2012. "The result was, there was so much criticism that a lot of people said the government should be doing the lead integration." Now, he says, having a contractor run the show is even seen as "inappropriate."

Here's what he's talking about. Through the 1990s and 2000s, the Department of Defense in particular saw an increase in the dollar value of contracts awarded, but a decrease in the number of staff available to administer them:

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[MrBogosity]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/24/the-government-didnt-do-a-great-job-with-healthcare-gov-a-private-company-mightve-been-worse/

Also I would like to voluntear or apply or however it owrks for Co-Hosting.

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