On 16/10/2013 3:37 AM, Kirk Wolf wrote:
David,
The referenced article only seems to talk about the front end "UX". The
CTO of HHS didn't even mention the back end (done by CGI Federal).
Probably slipped his mind :-)
From what I've been reading the fault is in the back end where Oracle
is rejecting connections due to overloaded
servers. You would have thought they would known how much capacity they
would need at the start of the project
or just use a cloud operator. Oh well, blame the Canadians.
I had a look at the website and it looks great. I love the minimalism,
very modern. All the knockers that are complaining
that it looks like a GoDaddy parked domain page haven't got a clue about
good UI design. It's not about fancy graphics,
it's all about simplification. Somebody should tell that to people who
designed IBMLink.
The entire system reported cost over 600 million USD (so far). I would
bet that I could put together a team of IBM-MAINers and build a system that
works just as well for half as much ;-)
That's an obscene amount of money! The problem is everything is
outsourced to contractors, who then offload to other contractors.
I know it's not the American way but I would rather spend tax payers
money on hiring smart people to work for the government instead
of lining the pockets of hapless IT consulting behemoths. The government
websites here in Australia are typically very good and the majority
of the work is done by public sector workers.
The UK government are at it again replacing an Oracle based NHS system
with open source technologies such as the Riak NoSQL datastore,
Redis, Nginx, Tornado, and RabbitMQ
www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/10/nhs_drops_oracle_for_riak/. A smart
move or a recipe for disaster? :)
Kirk Wolf
Dovetailed Technologies
http://dovetail.com
On Mon, Oct 14, 2013 at 7:58 PM, David Crayford <[email protected]> wrote:
On 15/10/2013 4:21 AM, Kirk Wolf wrote:
How great to finally have government information systems built by
hipsters....
Hardly hipsters. The project was outsourced to CGI Federal :). There are
certainly parallels here with gov.uk, but gov.uk has been a resounding
success.
It's a bit like one of those UK TV shows like Fawlty Towers that gets
remade in the US and fails miserably. However, gov.uk, like most sensible
startups,
had the good sense to use the elastic cloud. Once you know how much
capacity you need you can always bring it back in house.
It's so bad even the github repo page 404s.
http://www.theatlantic.com/**technology/archive/2013/06/**
healthcaregov-code-developed-**by-the-people-and-for-the-**
people-released-back-to-the-**people/277295/<http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/06/healthcaregov-code-developed-by-the-people-and-for-the-people-released-back-to-the-people/277295/>
A great quote from the article:
Jekyll, for those who are unfamiliar with web-development trends, is a way
for developers to build a static website from dynamic components. Instead
of running a traditional website with a relational database and
server-side
code, using Jekyll enables programmers to create content like they create
code. The end result of this approach is a site that loads faster for
users, a crucial performance issue, particularly on mobile devices.
"Instead of [running] farms of application servers to handle massive load,
you're basically slimming down to two," said Sivak. "You're just using
HTML5, CSS, and Javascript, all being done in responsive design. The way
it's being built matters. You could in theory do the same with application
servers and a CMS, but it would be much more complex. What we're doing
here
is giving anyone with basic skills to basic changes on the fly. You don't
need expensive consultants."
To be fair, the major problems reportedly are not with the UI, but with
the
back end. IMO, an example of "pig lipstick".
PS> For extra laughs, read some of the comments.
For an extra giggle
http://www.reddit.com/r/**webdev/comments/1nj692/<http://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/1nj692/>
.
Kirk Wolf
Dovetailed Technologies
http://dovetail.com
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