My blog partner, DG, was recently over visiting another blog run by right-wing flack Mitch Berg. On it, Berg (a friend of mine who works in User Experience Design) was kicking up his heels with glee over the on-line/computing delivery problems the Health Care Exchanges have experienced in the first couple of days of launch. Berg describes himself as an IT (Information Technology) Professional.
I happen to know, generally, what Mr. Berg did when he worked as a temporary contractor at a former employer of mine and it is certainly true he worked in the IT department. He worked on advising and designing the website layout for products which that employer was providing to customers. That's part of what User Experience does. As a result, he certainly is involved in the implementation of those products (though whether he actually participated in testing or post-launch remediation I can't say).
Consequently, he should know that there are vast problems with implementing software in the private sector. An apparent vulnerability in the software recently exposed users to a possible compromise of the security lock on a highly popular tablet and shared technology phone made by a very successful US computer manufacturer (tm) with the release of their most recent Operating System. Windows (tm) Millennium Edition (ME) was repeatedly updated to deal with post-release issues.
I spent 10 years doing coding, management and/or leading IT project after project from inception through release and post-implementation remediation. Virtually every release of software has flaws of some form, some small, some large - some so small the customer never sees them. Some (few) are like that, but none, not one I ran or know of, inside the organizations I worked for or ANYWHERE else of an entirely new application hit the market without flaws. It's probably impossible given the vast complexity of major applications and how many different groups must participate in that development. Go read a trade magazine on computer games to see what it's like if you think otherwise.
Furthermore, as I'm sitting here typing this, I am watching a show on the (well known FIREARM MAKER) Model X00 rifle which, according to the show "American Greed" seems to have an issue with it's trigger. The Model X00 is the largest selling rifle (historically) in the U.S. according to the show. Yet, it, according to the show, has had a problem which went unaddressed for decades, a problem which the designer brought up in 1948. Now, I'm not saying there IS a problem, the show is seeming to, but if it's true, I guess maybe there are in fact problems with private sector designs too, even by patriots like the gun makers at (FIREARM). A problem, according to the show, which went unaddressed due to the $.05 per gun it would have cost to fix it.
As well, Congress (the Republicans) pulled about $3B in funding from the delivery of the health care reform as part of the last debt ceiling negotiation, including pulling funding (per Kent Condrad) from the IT delivery mechanism of the health care exchanges (in other words, in a right wing effort to sabotage the delivery of health care at every level).
Lastly, more importantly even, one well-known form of hacking is a called Denial of Service (DOS) attack. It's where (often the Chinese) a big group of users or a network of computers will overload a system with service requests in order to shut it down. It's happened to the US banking system several times over the past five years (hitting certain select banks each time). It works because no system can be designed to deal with effectively unlimited numbers of users. Mr. Berg certainly knows this if he worked on ANY web-facing or any other user facing application at all. Each system is built to deal with an anticipated number of normal users, with some excess to deal with an expected peak volume but that peak volume may be wrong if the interest in the product exceeds expectation. The thing the that Mr. Berg (and others on the right who work in IT SHOULD know) is that systems have maximum capacity. The thing they SHOULD know, I think DO know, is that slow downs in delivery are common in the launch of a new product. Denial of Service attacks do NOT reflect a bug with the system, they reflect a malicious attack on a system which exceed the system's capacity to handle.
The initial launch difficulties points out that there are millions of Americans desperate for help paying for needed health care. Help because their dirt-paying (multiple) jobs don't suffice don't pay for that care. The cost for which the market hasn't remedied in 40 years. The market rarely provides software without problems. These issues show only that Republicans have to stop health care now, not because it doesn't work, hiccups happen, but because it may very well work very well. They know that if it does, they're doomed because it will show that the government in fact can and does frequently do very good things, often at least as well if not better than the private sector (the private sector that failed to solve this problem for example). They can fling pooh now (and are doing so), they can dis-inform now, but the fact is it the US is drowning in demand for something they (the "cons") didn't do when they had the chance and can't now have work (which is why they've done everything they can to stop it).
Still, the penultimate point is this, the service slow-down, similar to what a DOS attack shows, showed simply one and only one thing, it showed in unavoidable stark detail by each million after million "hit" on those servers that there is a desperate, overwhelming need for affordable health care is overwhelming and they (IT Dis-informers like Berg) damned well know it.
