By Jordan Fabian – 06/16/15 12:56 PM EDT
President Obama admits HealthCare.gov was a “well-documented disaster,” but says it helped the federal government better understand how to handle technology.
“With all the crises we were dealing with — the economy collapsing, the auto industry on the verge of collapse, winding down wars — this did not get the kind of laser-focused attention until HealthCare.gov, which was a well-documented disaster, but ended up anyways being the catalyst for us saying, ‘Okay, we have to completely revamp how we do things,’ ” Obama said in aninterview with Fast Company published Monday.
Obama’s comments come as he’s trying to promote his administration’s efforts to overhaul the government’s ancient technology infrastructure.
The president said outdated procurement rules and a lack of technological expertise hampered large-scale government projects, such as HealthCare.gov. But he said his administration has adopted new rules and recruited staffers from Google, Facebook and Twitter to beef up its tech efforts.
“If we are able through the U.S. digital team to recruit a baseline of talent and create a — pipeline — on a regular basis … what I do believe will happen is the government as a whole will start thinking about its relationship to citizens differently,” Obama said.
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/245128-obama-healthcaregov-a-well-documented-disaster
