Diagnosis for Healthcare.gov: Unrealistic Technology Expectations | MIT Technology Review

Some insights into a site/app development nightmare

"In particular, the project was doomed by a relatively late decision that required applicants to open an account and let the site verify their identity, residence, and income before they could browse for insurance. That meant the site would have to interface in real-time with databases maintained by the Internal Revenue Service and other agencies.
“You could put 100 Google engineers on it, and it’s not going to fix [the fact] that the scope of the project is flawed or fix the IRS system if it’s slow,” says John Halamka, chief information officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “You don’t want to query 10 downstream systems and be reliant on their performance, because you are only going to be as good as the slowest one.”"

Diagnosis for Healthcare.gov: Unrealistic Technology Expectations | MIT Technology Review