Obamacare Healthcare.gov Computer Code Analysis

[bbj3n546pt]

Excerpts from the complete article; links to the complete article and to the Javascript are provided below.

U.S. government spent $600+ million dollars on this project.

As of 11 October 2013, the White House cannot produce a single person who has successfully enrolled through the federally-run exchange Healthcare.gov.

Latin is used by programmers as filler / placeholder text for unfinished applications. The fact that this Latin is found in the code is yet more proof that the entire system never even entered Alpha testing, much less Beta testing or an official release. This is pre-alpha code requiring possible YEARS of development for final release.

It’s almost as if the entire system has been designed to fail. There is no rational justification for writing code like this. It’s like someone held a contest to find out “who can write the most inefficient, wasteful computer code” and Healthcare.gov won the top prize!

And yet, at the same time, this project perfectly reflects the foundational philosophy of the Obama administration: sell the dream to get elected, then screw everybody when it comes to implementation.


Obamacare computer code riddled with typos: complete article.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/obamacare-computer-code-riddled-with-typos-latin-filler-text-desperate-programmer-comments-and-disastrous-architecture.html

ROFLMAO is used in the article; means Rolling On Floor Laughing My Ass Off.


Healthcare.gov javascript discussed in the above article.
http://pastebin.com/dmS59us0

[Snookie]

Too freakin funny!

I was listening to the No Agenda Show a few days ago and Adam was saying that he couldn't even get to the home page. John said he found it very strange that no Tech websites were commenting on this fiasco. They were playing all these clips of different politicians refusing to say how many people had enrolled so far. No freaking wonder - just a LITTLE embarrassing to admit not ONE person has been able to sign up yet.

My first thought was that there couldn't have been any testing done prior to its release. No Application testing, no SIT (System Integration Testing) and no Product/User Acceptance Testing. In light of this it's obvious they didn't even do any Unit testing either.

How typical of the BO administration. Hope & change my arse. On second thought that must have been what those programers were doing .... Closing their eyes and hoping for a change to their code.

[ThePythonicCow]

On second thought that must have been what those programers were doing .... Closing their eyes and hoping for a change to their code.
That's what the first draft code of programmers of ordinary talent looks like. What the programmers were doing was checking in their code according to deadlines, not according to what was good quality.

The first draft code of some higher quality programmers, the first time it is keyed into the computer, might look better than this, because they might be able to perform the mental "clean-up and polish" steps on the fly, as they think about the code and type.

But programmers of lesser talents, on a project where deadlines reign supreme over the integrity of the product (usually because the program managers couldn't tell quality code from the extrusions of a horse's arse), will end up not only typing in such code, but then checking it in, when the deadline dictates.

If there were "code metrics" understood by management, they were likely of three kinds (1) a count of the lines of code, (2) whether it compiles, and (3) when it was checked in.

[MargueriteBee]

Some kind of sabotage?

[ThePythonicCow]

Some kind of sabotage?

No need for that. Poor quality code is easy to come by.

[ThePythonicCow]

More articles are coming out on the failure of HealthCare.gov. Here's one from the Washington Post: Some say health-care site’s problems highlight flawed federal IT policies (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/some-say-health-care-sites-problems-highlight-flawed-federal-it-policies/2013/10/09/d558da42-30fe-11e3-8627-c5d7de0a046b_story.html?hpid=z3).

This article begins:

=======================




Problems with the federal government’s new health-care 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 U.S. 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 www.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.

These companies also sometimes fail to communicate effectively with each other as a major project moves ahead. Dozens of private firms had a role in developing the online insurance exchanges at the core of the health-care program and its Web site, working on contracts that collectively were worth hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a Government Accountability Office report in June.

The result has been particularly stark when compared with the slick, powerful computer systems built for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, which in 2008 harnessed the emerging power of social networking and in 2012 relied on aggressive data-mining efforts to identify and turn out voters. For those, the campaign recruited motivated young programmers, often from tech start-ups.
=======================

[ThePythonicCow]

Here's another article on the failure of HealthCare.gov, from Digital Trends: We paid over $500 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404 (http://www.digitaltrends.com/opinion/obamacare-healthcare-gov-website-cost/).

This article begins:

==============================




It’s been one full week since the flagship technology portion of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) went live. And since that time, the befuddled beast (http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/obamacare-website-outage-forces-uninsured-to-use-1800s-technology/) that is Healthcare.gov has shutdown, crapped out, stalled, and mis-loaded so consistently that its track record for failure is challenged only by Congress.

The site itself, which apparently underwent major code renovations over the weekend, still rejects user logins, fails to load drop-down menus and other crucial components for users that successfully gain entrance, and otherwise prevents uninsured Americans in the 36 states it serves from purchasing healthcare at competitive rates – Healthcare.gov’s primary purpose. The site is so busted that, as of a couple days ago, the number of people that successfully purchased healthcare through it was in the “single digits,” according to the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/obamacare-site-goes-live-with-some-glitches/2013/10/01/380a4300-2a9d-11e3-8ade-a1f23cda135e_story.html).

The reason for this nationwide headache apparently stems from poorly written code (https://www.healthcare.gov/marketplace/global/en_US/registration.js), which buckled under the heavy influx of traffic that its engineers and administrators should have seen coming. But the fact that Healthcare.gov can’t do the one job it was built to do isn’t the most infuriating part of this debacle – it’s that we, the taxpayers, seem to have forked up more than $500 million of the federal purse to build the digital equivalent of a rock.
==============================

[Snowflower]

The last paragraph in that article gave me the clue I needed to be able to say this. The fiasco is intentional. When we see this level of incompetence, we want to simply laugh with scorn at the idiots. But, I don't think they are incompetent. The proof is right there in front of our eyes in the demonstrated competence from O's campaign staff. So, the real question is why they want to sabotage their own Ocare campaign while at the same time putting on a dog and pony circus of shutting down services to citizens in an apparent "fight to the death" support for Ocare?

eta: I meant the last paragraph in the post preceding the last, where they mention O's campaign. I am on my I-pad and it doesn't do partial quotes well.

[ThePythonicCow]

The last paragraph in that article gave me the clue I needed to be able to say this. The fiasco is intentional. When we see this level of incompetence, we want to simply laugh with scorn at the idiots. But, I don't think they are incompetent. The proof is right there in front of our eyes in the demonstrated competence from O's campaign staff. So, the real question is why they want to sabotage their own Ocare campaign while at the same time putting on a dog and pony circus of shutting down services to citizens in an apparent "fight to the death" support for Ocare?

eta: I meant the last paragraph in the post preceding the last, where they mention O's campaign. I am on my I-pad and it doesn't do partial quotes well.

One does not need to sabotage major software projects to have them fail. One just needs the priorities of senior management to be something else other than "It. Must. Work."

With the complex relationships of government funded large contracted projects, the priorities become making money and avoiding being the one blamed for failure. Avoiding blame doesn't mean making sure it works; it means making sure the other guy can be blamed for any failures. No one in position of significant power in the project is actually even in a position to ensure technical success of the project, even if they really wanted to.

Computer projects of individual campaigns have an entirely different power structure. One man, reporting directly to the head of the campaign, has his arse on the line to Make It Work, and has sufficient authority to do whatever must be done to make that happen.

(None of my comments rule out the possibility that HealthCare.gov was intended to fail like this, by some evil scheme of the bastards in power ... that remains to be seen so far as I know.)

[Robin]

I still contend that this is the work from an outside group...most likely Anonymous. But again, no proof.

[risveglio]

Some kind of sabotage?

No need for that. Poor quality code is easy to come by.

And its "usually" cheap too.

[wolf_rt]

One does not need to sabotage major software projects to have them fail. One just needs the priorities of senior management to be something else other than "It. Must. Work."

With the complex relationships of government funded large contracted projects, the priorities become making money and avoiding being the one blamed for failure. Avoiding blame doesn't mean making sure it works; it means making sure the other guy can be blamed for any failures. No one in position of significant power in the project is actually even in a position to ensure technical success of the project, even if they really wanted to.

I certainly can't imagine it would have been actively sabotaged, just allowed to fail.

Paul, do you think that throwing money at the problem can fix it or at least get it semi useable within a few months? or does it need years of development no matter how many programmers/money is thrown at the problem?

[Flash]

If you have seen computer projects around or worked in it, you know that the failure rate (not in time, not in budget or not working) is 80 %, yes, 80%, statistically proven, in large organisations (private or public, public being the worst). So it is reaaaaaally easy to fail. No need for conspiracy here, just need for human behavior. (i have seen it on the management side of the recipient of the computer service, please, don't ask me how it works technically).

[ThePythonicCow]

Paul, do you think that throwing money at the problem can fix it or at least get it semi useable within a few months? or does it need years of development no matter how many programmers/money is thrown at the problem?
Technically, it's almost certainly toast, fouled up beyond all recall. Any throwing of money can only accomplish publicity objectives, not technical objectives.

How that will translate into what's publicly visible, I could only guess.

So far as I am aware (not that far), the only essential task this HealthCare.gov needed to perform was to assign people to health insurance companies. This could be done in a day, with pencil and paper: announce for example that everyone in Kansas whose Social Security Number ends in 00 through 19 is assigned to Acme Medical Insurance Company ... and so on ... for each state in the system and all Social Security numbers.

[jagman]

Our worries are over. Obama said he's bringing in the "A Team" to fix the glitches.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MVonyVSQoM&feature=player_detailpage

[Conchis]

Makes you wonder how secure the information they are getting is, doesn't it? They get social security numbers, addresses...everything a competent criminal would need, stored on a server full of code written by 6 year olds.

[Mike Gorman]

Excerpts from the complete article; links to the complete article and to the Javascript are provided below.

U.S. government spent $600+ million dollars on this project.

As of 11 October 2013, the White House cannot produce a single person who has successfully enrolled through the federally-run exchange Healthcare.gov.

Latin is used by programmers as filler / placeholder text for unfinished applications. The fact that this Latin is found in the code is yet more proof that the entire system never even entered Alpha testing, much less Beta testing or an official release. This is pre-alpha code requiring possible YEARS of development for final release.

It’s almost as if the entire system has been designed to fail. There is no rational justification for writing code like this. It’s like someone held a contest to find out “who can write the most inefficient, wasteful computer code” and Healthcare.gov won the top prize!

And yet, at the same time, this project perfectly reflects the foundational philosophy of the Obama administration: sell the dream to get elected, then screw everybody when it comes to implementation.


Obamacare computer code riddled with typos: complete article.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/obamacare-computer-code-riddled-with-typos-latin-filler-text-desperate-programmer-comments-and-disastrous-architecture.html

ROFLMAO is used in the article; means Rolling On Floor Laughing My Ass Off.


Healthcare.gov javascript discussed in the above article.
http://pastebin.com/dmS59us0

To be quite accurate-the 'Latin' you refer to here is just the 'Lorem Ipsum' blank text, which is a convention used to fill in text areas when the actual text is unknown, or as a placeholder.
Sure the system is behind schedule, and I am sure it is typical of most Govt projects (the white projects anyway) wasteful, mismanaged and myopically carried out-but the latin is legit
and just in a text area; the Java code itself looks fair enough-it is just a Form with calls to jqueries -an automatic version of a form-with password recovery routines outlined.
I recognize this as a standard coding sequence-from many years working in I.T and contracting on govt projects.
Cheers

[ThePythonicCow]

Great cartoon for Obamacare from ZeroHedge (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-26/obamacare-or-air-where-we-stand):

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2013/10/20131026_obamacare.jpg