Some say healthcare site’s problems highlight flawed federal IT policies

Problems with the federal government’s new healthcare Web site have attracted legions of armchair analysts who speak of its problems with “virtualization” and “load testing.” Yet increasingly, they are saying the root cause is not simply a matter of flawed computer code but rather the government’s habit of buying outdated, costly and buggy technology.

The US government spends more than $80 billion a year for information technology services, yet the resulting systems typically take years to build and often are cumbersome when they launch. While the error messages, long waits and other problems with healthcare.gov have been spotlighted by the high profile nature of its launch and unexpectedly heavy demands on the system, such glitches are common, say those who argue for a nimbler procurement system. They say most government agencies have a shortage of technical staff and long have outsourced most jobs to big contractors that, while skilled in navigating a byzantine procurement system, are not on the cutting edge of developing user-friendly Web sites. “The episode is all too typical of how government creates IT services,” said Tom Lee, director of Sunlight Labs, the research arm of the Sunlight Foundation, which advocates for more government transparency. “The procurement process tends to select for firms that are good at navigating the procurement process, not providing good IT services for the dollar.”