Enter
responsible for constituents who
will expect to be able to get information and solve problems using
their laptops and mobile devices.
At the risk of sounding like a
broken record, over in the United Kingdom, a similar case of a
health care website gone wrong
spurred politicians to act in a
more visionary fashion. As NPR’s
Elise Hu reported:
Instead of writing behemoth,
long-term contracts with a long
list of specifications for outside
contractors, Parliament greenlighted the creation of the Government Digital Service, a “goteam” of 300 technologists who
began streamlining 90 percent
of the most common transactions the British people have
with government. It appointed
[Mike] Bracken, a tech industry
veteran, as the first ever executive director of digital — a Cabinet-level position.
Two years later, gov.uk is a single, simple platform connecting
hundreds of British agencies
and allowing people to pay taxes, register for student loans,
renew passports and more. Doing technology this way is sav-
LOOKING FORWARD
IN ANGST
HUFFINGTON
02.23.14
ing British taxpayers at least
$20 million a year, according
to government estimates.
It isn’t really enough to simply
“blow the whistle” or “take someone to task” for Healthcare.gov’s
failures. Those issues underscored
much deeper problems, to which
these would-be public servants
should respond by explaining how
they’ll reform the process that led
It isn’t really enough
to simply ‘blow the whistle’
or ‘take someone to task’ for
Healthcare.gov’s failures.
Those issues underscored
much deeper problems.”
to a failed website in the first place,
and what specific steps they’ll take
to bring government into the digital
age. Ignoring this issue simply demonstrates how out of touch these
politicians are with the way ordinary people live their lives.
If you just look at the underlying
electoral fundamentals, it’s likely
that Democrats are going to have a
bad year at the polls. But the lack
of vision and guts surely
doesn’t help.