Houston, We Have a Problem...

[exedir]

It was 43 years ago that the voyage of Apollo 13 to moon was interrupted by a malfunction, an explosion of the fuel cell's hydrogen tank that crippled and put the astronauts at risk and required a rescue plan where failure was not an option. The entire Apollo space program was a daring, innovated and risky government sponsored program that put national prestige and technology at stake, putting together teams of private and government resources into one agency with one mission to support, the moon landing program.

They succeeded.

Those on the ground were able to come up with a solution that both saved the astronauts from death and relieved a country and a people of the terrible lost that would have been the only enviable result not only of failure of technology and engineering, but of problem solving and implementation of a hoped for fix by the astronauts themselves.

We are now faced with another failure, never as dramatic as Apollo 13 but to some the consequences are just as life altering if not life ending as it was for the three in space 43 years ago.

In the case of Apollo 13, the blame for the accident was traced to a 50¢ defective part, in the case of ObamaCare's enrollment web site, HealthCare.gov, the blame has yet to be determined and allocated.  However, the idea that after at least two years'lead time to setup and test the web site, at a cost yet to be determined, but certainly one that includes many millions of already spent money, the site does not work to the level necessary to support the initial enrollment effort for the federal run healthcare insurance exchanges, and someone has to take responsibility to fix it. This the president did, finally, yesterday, with the result that failure is not an option for the administration much less the Department of Health and Human Services where the administrative responsibility for ObamaCare implementation lies and starts with the secretary of the department, Kathleen Sebeilus.

Embarrassing yes, fixed no, not right now and that is the problem. The web site has to be fixed within a timeline that is compressed and ticking. Worse, the first explanations of why the thing didn't work aren't true. The first explanation was that the site was experiencing a Denial of Service phenomenon because of the success of ObamaCare not the failure of the site, as too many people were attempting to access the site at the same time and overwhelming the serving computers making the site unavailable. The solution was that overtime the site demand would back off and additional servers would be dedicated to supporting the web site so people could access the site. Though capacity was added, the web site still was not functional, and the next explanation was that the coding was in error and needed to be repaired and replace which would require updates to be created and maintenance shutdowns to made. Now the problem with coding has been examined and fixes attempted addition functional problems has been identified that have to do with the web site design and functional requirements that will require a higher level of intervention including a redesign of many of the parts and then a rewrite of the code to incorporate those design changes. 

And none of that happening within a day, and be more likely at least a week or maybe more as new
resources are brought to bare on the problem, or more likely problems, of running the site.

Of course, none of this means that ObamaCare has no access, there remain the 800 number and paper, but that this was not a part of the design or the timeline necessary to implement ObamaCare insurance coverage signup and enrollment for the January 1, 2014 benefit start date.

As to whether the federal exchange web site can be fixed, sure, of course, but it will take time and as in Apollo 13, time is everything when failure is not an option.

[exedir]

Speaking of pissing, Americans have the most expensive urine in the world, just saying.

[LoveLife&Laughter]

You should see some of the shit being shoveled, and they don't seem to care what the cost is.

[Ioruach]

What happens again and again, though, is that Congresspeople or Senators have a juicy military contract in their district and damned if they are going to let it go, even if the military says they don't need the item the contract produces. And usually its in the billions of dollars, not just millions. It's our political system with its hands in the taxpayers' pockets.

[ProblemAgain]

kind of like the marines getting a new amphibious assault vehicle even if IT DIDN'T WORK and THEY DIDN'T WANT IT at a cost of 13 BILLION dollars cause it was produced in the right district i e that of the chairperson of the appropriations committee...or the airships that didn't work at a cost of 7 billion (you have the best and the brightest and they can't figure out the weight factor??or they just love those costplus contracts so they keep fucking up and fixing forever)....or  the camo uniforms that didn't work and actually made GREAT TARGETS of the troops wearing them......go ahead fill in a blank...there's lots of them....

[ProblemAgain]

oh but you gotta love this shit....500 dollar a gallon fuel...$771 million for aircraft but they forgot that they needed literate recruits to be able to train them to be pilots.....

US watchdog slams $500-a-gallon fuel for Afghan hospital

October 23, 2013 11:40 AM

Kabul (AFP) - A US-funded project to build a hospital in Afghanistan paid $500 a gallon for fuel instead of a market rate of $5, a watchdog said Wednesday in a damning report into overspending and waste.

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said that construction of the 100-bed hospital in Gardez, Paktiya province, was 23 months behind schedule.

It accused USAID's implementing partner, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), of "weak internal controls" that led to overpayments of at least $507,000.

"IOM paid the contractor $300,000 for 600 gallons of diesel fuel -- a cost of $500 per gallon. According to IOM officials, the market price in Afghanistan for diesel fuel should not exceed $5.00 per gallon," the SIGAR report said.

"IOM (also) paid $220,000 for an automatic temperature control device that should have cost between $2,000 and $10,000.

"IOM could not provide us with a vendor invoice for either of these payments," it added. "USAID did not discover the overpayments and reimbursed IOM for these unwarranted costs."

SIGAR, which has issued a string of highly critical assessments of US reconstruction projects in Afghanistan, recommended that USAID should seek to recover the cash from IOM.

USAID issued a statement saying that it was conducting an audit into the project, and would "take swift action to address any problems and recover funds" if the allegations were proved to be true.

Richard Danziger, IOM's chief of mission for Afghanistan, said it denied any overpayments and expected to be cleared by the USAID review.

"We will cooperate with the audit and are confident that any allegations will be proved to be incorrect," Danziger told AFP, adding that the delays in construction were due to the hostile environment in Gardez.

The SIGAR report will raise further worries about wastage of the billions of dollars of international aid spent in a country that is set to rely on donor funding for years as it battles a resilient Taliban insurgency.

In July, SIGAR criticised USAID for spending nearly $50 million on programmes which had failed to strengthen Afghan local government or improve stability,

It has also said the US was not properly monitoring a programme to train judges and lawyers, and was spending $771 million on aircraft for Afghanistan in a project that was at risk in part due to a lack of literate recruits.

[exedir]

Though this post wasn't about waste, fraud and abuse, it could be.  What was, was a story of crisis management that succeeded, and point out the ongoing challenge and solution required in this latest crisis on the federal government healthcare web site.  

As presented by Secretary Sebelius on Wednesday, $118 million or there about's was spent by CMS to build the web site, with $58 million or so, spent on other tech support which means, about around $175 million was sunk before the Oct 1st launch, with more now being poured into it to fix the problem(s) to make the site both viable and running before the end of the month, November. 

As to the idea of what greases the skids of American politics, reform stopped the evil practice of earmarks..or not, as those bills that do get past, many times, have these specific expenditure requests which if looked at in the light of day, seem like earmarks....and grease to the skids....

[LoveLife&Laughter]

What about the $24 Billion the whiners shutdown cost?

[exedir]

All true, all about choices...made if even they are senseless...

What we have here are the truly committed to a belief that government is too large, too intrusive, too expensive and truly incompetent, and well worth the expense to talk about it, if not demonstrate it by shutting parts of it down, a lot of it for 16 days.

What has been lost in the last decade or so, is the middle ground to the point that the center does not hold, where compromise is not a solution but only a threat, that government is not held to be necessary, but an enemy of the people by its existence and operation.