All correct points. And I myself have interacted with lots of older (pre-J2EE) systems, they tend to be characterized by stability and sanity, however weird. Grok the formats, write adapter code, you can get the job done as long as you don't exceed their duty cycles.
You're right, those going on the record are feeding us crap, although the site is a bit more complicated because it wants to confirm identity to reduce fraud (although a lot of that was punted; this is a separate system done by another contractor using Oracle's identity system; CMMS panicked and proposed to replace it 3 days after launch), it must get FICO scores (from Experian as it turns out) because that's a part of insurance policy pricing, and it and only it (or a subsystem below it) is the only allowed source for all sites' subsidy calculations, which are utterly important for Obamacare to work (otherwise a lot of less wealthy people and families simply won't be able to pay for policies, since there's only one gold-plated type now legal, the old major medical ones are outlawed come Jan. 1).
Except perhaps for getting the FICO scores, all of the above is being observed to frequently fail, as is the interfacing to the insurance companies (which ought to be de novo), they're getting self-evidently bogus data including multiple enrollment and cancellations of the same person.
Who know's who's responsible for the latter, but CMMS is unquestionably responsible for making sure that worked.
"I'm hoping that as a developers everybody can see that."
For far too many, like Mr. Bray, revolutionary truth beats bourgeois truth ... pity that attitude is slamming into the brick wall of reality, that computers do exactly what we tell them to do, not what we want them to do. Which of course is delaying any steps that would get this fixed in time, e.g. the White House and CMMS have been consumed with the launch mess for 3 solid weeks and hope to have a plan come Thursday, vs. e.g. the White House realizing CMMS as the integrator, including integration testing per the AP, and HHS/CMMS as requirements specifier are part of the problem, not part of the solution to any likely fix before things get really ugly.
And as you note, ignoring the lessons of The Mythical Man Month" and throwing more programmers at it, calling it a "tech 'surge'" (an odd call out to Bush competency or a precursor to blaming it all on Bush? :-)
Comments
All correct points. And I myself have interacted with lots of older (pre-J2EE) systems, they tend to be characterized by stability and sanity, however weird. Grok the formats, write adapter code, you can get the job done as long as you don't exceed their duty cycles.
You're right, those going on the record are feeding us crap, although the site is a bit more complicated because it wants to confirm identity to reduce fraud (although a lot of that was punted; this is a separate system done by another contractor using Oracle's identity system; CMMS panicked and proposed to replace it 3 days after launch), it must get FICO scores (from Experian as it turns out) because that's a part of insurance policy pricing, and it and only it (or a subsystem below it) is the only allowed source for all sites' subsidy calculations, which are utterly important for Obamacare to work (otherwise a lot of less wealthy people and families simply won't be able to pay for policies, since there's only one gold-plated type now legal, the old major medical ones are outlawed come Jan. 1).
Except perhaps for getting the FICO scores, all of the above is being observed to frequently fail, as is the interfacing to the insurance companies (which ought to be de novo), they're getting self-evidently bogus data including multiple enrollment and cancellations of the same person.
Who know's who's responsible for the latter, but CMMS is unquestionably responsible for making sure that worked.
"I'm hoping that as a developers everybody can see that."
For far too many, like Mr. Bray, revolutionary truth beats bourgeois truth ... pity that attitude is slamming into the brick wall of reality, that computers do exactly what we tell them to do, not what we want them to do. Which of course is delaying any steps that would get this fixed in time, e.g. the White House and CMMS have been consumed with the launch mess for 3 solid weeks and hope to have a plan come Thursday, vs. e.g. the White House realizing CMMS as the integrator, including integration testing per the AP, and HHS/CMMS as requirements specifier are part of the problem, not part of the solution to any likely fix before things get really ugly.
And as you note, ignoring the lessons of The Mythical Man Month" and throwing more programmers at it, calling it a "tech 'surge'" (an odd call out to Bush competency or a precursor to blaming it all on Bush? :-)