Something’s on the roast, but it’s not Thanksgiving turkey. After a complete failure in its official launch last month, Obamacare’s HealthCare.gov is under tremendous public criticism. Will this project burn to a crisp, or is there a way to salvage it?

Signed into American legislation on March 23^rd, 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is a national health care reform aimed at changing the future of the American health care system especially for the millions who previously could not afford it. The idea is to reduce government spending in and provide better, cheaper options of health care for all Americans. As part of this reform, affectionately referred to as “ObamaCare,” the online health insurance marketplace HealthCare.gov was launched on October 1^st, 2013 that allows Americans to determine if they are eligible for government-subsidized coverage and compare prices on affordable, quality insurance.

So what went wrong at launch?

• The unanticipated flood of users interested in the website lead to a virtual “wait room” for all users who could not even log in due to massive lag and denied access.
• There were further glitches in the website that prevented certain payment transactions.
• The website was criticized for difficulty in navigation on top of the technical problems.

What was the damage of the unsuccessful launch?

• After one month of launch, only 106,185 Americans chose Obamacare out of all health insurance plans available and only 25.2% purchase through HealthCare.gov.[1]
• HealthCare.gov cost upwards of $600 million[2], more than triple the amount spent to build LinkedIn ($200 million).

What additional problems arose after the launch?

• On October the 20^th, well over two weeks after the website’s launch, U.S. President Obama himself admitted to being disappointed at the website’s launch. The Department of Health and Human Services published a blog post acknowledging previous hiccups during the site’s testing and even promotional phases, and promised to bring in “the best and the brightest” to fix it. This provoked critics to disparage why that was not done in from the onset.
• Earlier this week on November the 26th, the Obama administration announced a one-year delay for small businesses in signing up coverage via HealthCare.gov and forcing them to go through offline enrollment while they fix the user functionality. [3]

So what actually went wrong?

This, of course, is a huge discussion. Aside from the political nature of this website, additional volatility surrounds the vast amount of stakeholders and uncertainty in predicting website usage. As expected, a lot of fingers have been pointed at different stakeholders, but it is still ultimately the U.S. government’s responsibility to establish a working website.

LACK OF AN OFFICIAL PROJECT CHARTER

This project bares similarity to the TAURUS project developed by the London Stock Exchange which failed because they were over-ambitious, tried to appeal too many stakeholders, and never clarified a starting point and ending goal. A clear project charter would have helped to clarify the stakeholders, requirements, timeline, and key objectives of HealthCare.gov, thereby eliminating scope creep and assigning accountability. Clearly outlining the project requirements and expectations across all contractors could have also aligned them towards a common set of goals and deliverables. They could have even outlined performance metrics or used an earned value management tool to track the progress of the project during development to keep both the budget and timeline tight. The result of not having a project charter? Overpromising and under-delivering.

OUTSOURCING METHOD WAS OVERLY COMPLEX

Given all the stakeholders HealthCare.gov had to address, the Obamacare website was already complicated enough without 55 different contractors. Out of the 55, CGI Federal was the main contractor, handling the Federally Facilitated Marketplace, QSSI lead the registration tool and data transfer service, Equifax verified the income data to determine eligibility to health care, and Serco handled paper applications[4]. Proprietary software was impossible to integrate, functionality and speed was not well considered, and communication was difficult to facilitate across all different parties. This unnecessary complexity lead to critical functionalities of the website being sub-par even at launch.

LACK OF CLEAR RISK MITIGATION STRATEGY

Not only was end-to-end testing held off until a couple weeks before launch[5], and even so the failed testing should have been a clear red flag, but even that was overlooked. Using a Risk Matrix could have been established even before the website launch to anticipate a proper mitigation strategy should the launch fail (which happened to be the case). Inability to handle more than peak load could have been one of these risks, and a simple solution would be waiting for the results on legal compatibility with Amazon Cloud Services to establish a central, scalable solution.

So what should they do now?

An initial failure to launch does not mean that the project cannot be salvaged. By establishing structure and seeking the right help, HealthCare.gov still has the chance to become a service Americans can be thankful for.

First and foremost, they need to seek the right help to help them get back on track. Aneesh Chopra, former White House CTO, suggests the Presidential Innovation Fellows to help pair the U.S. government with the “best and brightest” from the private sector with a track-record in restoring programs that have faced technical troubles like this. Finding one capable and experienced leader who knows politics, technology, and the healthcare industry is crucial in overseeing the IT project, and will help to centralize communication.

Second, they should develop project plan and management structure. Knowing the complexities in the backend working with an abundance of contractors and databases, managing all these parties in an effective way will help streamline the project delivery. All the time while developing the functionality, they must remember to anticipate risk.

Next, they need to get the website to function properly. This starts with gathering user feedback, prioritizing what to fix, and starting with guaranteeing the core functionalities of the website: “organizing insurance plans, assessing program eligibility, facilitating consumer enrollment.”^[1] These are the “minimum viable product” for the website, or the bare minimum for the website to function.”

In the long term, after they finally launch a bug-free version website, HealthCare.gov should to consistently monitor the activity to ensure first response to unanticipated problems.

“Social media” — two words that we Generation Y’s have been constantly bombarded with these past few years.

It is very interesting to look back at the progression of social media and migrating trends on the interwebs (as I affectionately call it) thus far, from MySpace to Facebook to Twitter and Youtube, as well as the evolution in the definition of the word itself. An interesting blog post  describes a wide variety of definitions for social media, leading to a hefty discussion about what social media really is. What amazes me is the deviance between definitions given by people of different statuses, roles, or industries.

For example, Wikipedia defines social media as “web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue.” A response to the blogpost suggested that “social marketing is the art of encouraging consumers to shift between audience, author and influencer.” European marketing professors, Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein, emphasize the technical aspects of social media as  “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.”

Personally, acknowledging that there is no set definition, I believe the blog definition comes extremely close to grasping the essence of social media in its current state. A pessimist would say that social media has deviated from pure social interaction to strategic engagement, usually with monetary benefits. However, the way I see it, social media is just a simple method organizations or companies are using to interact with individuals through a more personable approach, and in this case, individuals would be the audience. Consumers can also play the role of “author” by creating online materials to respond back (for instance through blogging), and then “influencing” peers by sharing pages or tweeting news about organizations. This “online presence” that acts as a link between consumers and the online community has become increasingly important.

Out of personal experience, in an application for an innovative technology solutions company, I was asked to my amusement the amount of Facebook friends and Twitter followers I had. Has online presence has somehow become correlated to influential power, social skills and credibility? After immediate research, I noticed that it wasn’t just the technology industries. Even the hotel industry is looking to increase revenue and booking volume by investing in more social media which, according to the article, has become as popular as pay-per-click or more.

All of this just leaves me to wonder, has social media become integral to all aspects (of life, of business, of jobs, and even of education) in our generation, and can it keep being revamped and innovated, or is it just another trend that is about to reach its plateau?

DURING the September of 2008, a huge scandal broke. The parents of a baby Chinese boy, whom had developed kidney stones after drinking milk powder manufactured in China, filed a lawsuit against Sanlu (biggest  producer of milk powder in China) for the damage to their son’s health (seeking a $22,000 compensation).

The article by National Post, “More than 54,000 affected by China milk scandal,” reports of four infant deaths attributed to the chemical additive, not to mention more than a hundred with other serious conditions. The number climbed to an estimate of 300,000 victims and 13 infant deaths.

In this ordeal, Nestle (Northeastern China manufacturer) was also found guilty of having minor levels of melamine in its milk powder products (source: Taiwan says melamine found in Nestle milk powders). So why would a such a big and renowned company insert harmful additives “traditionally used to create durable dishware and clear resins” into foods consumed by infants?

Nestle’s contemptible reason was to falsify food quality checks of water-downed milk by  increase nutrient and protein levels with nitrogen-rich melamine.  Now let’s take a look at Nestle Canada’s vision:

Our vision is to be the leading nutrition, health and wellness company in Canada bringing Good Food, Good Life to Canadians throughout their lives.

Is this not a drastic and outrageous contrast? The companies abused the public’s trust in their brand name and have harmed tens of thousands of infants by limiting materials for the benefit of, well, conserving money alone… and they are still up and running.