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flybrand | 1 year ago

Gov’t rollout of IT - just like any large roll out of IT - remains a mess. The recent work w FAFSA is a good example.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/03/11/how-new-...

discuss

order

resource_waste|1 year ago

healthcare.gov turned out alright for the most part.

Negatives:

There is still an unavoidable 20 clicks to select your health insurance, there is no way to get some .csv output or even chart to compare plans. Everything is clicking clicking clicking.

Most people probably don't need to compare 200+ plans, but by not having the UX the insurance companies win.

Positives:

Everything is explained in understandable terms. I don't think its possible to mess things up.

I know billion dollar websites are prob a bad idea, but if we can create over a billion in savings/GDP growth, it should be a no-brainer to invest in stuff like this.

beej71|1 year ago

I've only used healthcare.gov once, and that was a couple years ago. It seemed to work quite well.

Then I took an unexpected job and had to pay all of it back, but that's another story. :-)

jermaustin1|1 year ago

HealthCare.gov is a decent large government big UX project. It turned out pretty good, all things considered.

IMO, I wish the government would have found and replicated (or contracted?) the service I had used before HealthCare.gov existed [0], and just bolted on the subsidies and other things they do. It is still functional today, and I've used it to get insurance since HealthCare.gov went live (specifically off-marketplace, but marketplace-compliant insurance), and it is my first stop anytime my HealthCare.gov insurance tells me the price is going up. I compare with eHealthInsurance, if eHealthInsurance is cheaper, I go with it instead.

0: https://www.ehealthinsurance.com/

antisthenes|1 year ago

If you think healthcare.gov turned out alright, you're just proving the point.

I'd hate to see how "not-alright" projects ended up.

I guess they had to be scrapped after wasting billions of dollars?

thfuran|1 year ago

I'd rather see most of that billion invested in fixing the processes that led to a billion dollar website being a possibility.

whiterknight|1 year ago

A billion dollar cart checkout flow.

kjkjadksj|1 year ago

I tried to renew my passport and it looks like they tried to get an online renewal system off the ground, got lift for a few months, then shut it down indefinitely. From the country that brought you the internet, here’s a broken web form. Then again the state dept is pretty anti common person; poor people wait for months to renew their passport while rich people just pay extra to expedite it.

orev|1 year ago

The tax filing system is being launched to a limited number of people in a limited number of states specifically to avoid these issues. They’re essentially smaller pilot programs aimed at the more simple tax cases, where they can learn and build on top of that.