I think the 'someone needs to be fired' is just press release journalism. It makes for an easy narrative. "There's a problem at healthcare.gov" is the first story. "What happened at healthcare.gov" is the second story. "Blah Jones has resigned" has everybody wiping their hands and looking for the next press release story to write about.
It's certainly possible that a given individual is meaningfully responsible for a problem and that they are incompetent, but it isn't necessarily the case. If the actual problem is organizational, a scapegoat just papers over it, it won't fix anything.
I didn't say "someone needs to be fired" -- that's a paraphrase of what I typed, not a quote.
My point is a broader one: When you have committees and subcommittees and working groups and HHS IT people and CMS IT people and task forces and contractors and subcontractors and new replacement contractors (Accenture) and undersecretaries and sub-sub contractors and assistant secretaries and White House aides and political consultants and PR firms and deputy chiefs of staff and deputy undersecretaries all participating to some extent in the $1B+ process that is the supremely functional Healthcare.gov site we all know and love, the buck can be passed endlessly.
But in all that morass of a process, someone was or should have been responsible for ensuring that standard privacy practices were followed. To her credit, Kathleen Sebelius resigned last year (though not immediately) as a result of what the NYT called the "disastrous rollout" of Helathcare.gov. It is worth looking at whether there is any accountability in the form of dismissals or resignations with this privacy snafu.
If there is not, we should draw our own conclusions.
Comments
I think the 'someone needs to be fired' is just press release journalism. It makes for an easy narrative. "There's a problem at healthcare.gov" is the first story. "What happened at healthcare.gov" is the second story. "Blah Jones has resigned" has everybody wiping their hands and looking for the next press release story to write about.
It's certainly possible that a given individual is meaningfully responsible for a problem and that they are incompetent, but it isn't necessarily the case. If the actual problem is organizational, a scapegoat just papers over it, it won't fix anything.
I didn't say "someone needs to be fired" -- that's a paraphrase of what I typed, not a quote.
My point is a broader one: When you have committees and subcommittees and working groups and HHS IT people and CMS IT people and task forces and contractors and subcontractors and new replacement contractors (Accenture) and undersecretaries and sub-sub contractors and assistant secretaries and White House aides and political consultants and PR firms and deputy chiefs of staff and deputy undersecretaries all participating to some extent in the $1B+ process that is the supremely functional Healthcare.gov site we all know and love, the buck can be passed endlessly.
But in all that morass of a process, someone was or should have been responsible for ensuring that standard privacy practices were followed. To her credit, Kathleen Sebelius resigned last year (though not immediately) as a result of what the NYT called the "disastrous rollout" of Helathcare.gov. It is worth looking at whether there is any accountability in the form of dismissals or resignations with this privacy snafu.
If there is not, we should draw our own conclusions.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply I was quoting you, limitations of the format.
To my point, Sebelius resigning didn't do anything to prevent this (apparent) mistake.