Definitive healthcare.gov (and techmanagement.gov in general)

In the comments of my last post I was asked to provide a take on the healthcare.gov fiasco. Since I cannot improve a whit on Clay Shirky’s perfect post today, I will settle for just quoting my favorite paragraph.

The vision of “technology” as something you can buy according to a plan, then have delivered as if it were coming off a truck, flatters and relieves managers who have no idea and no interest in how this stuff works, but it’s also a breeding ground for disaster. The mismatch between technical competence and executive authority is at least as bad in government now as it was in media companies in the 1990s, but with much more at stake.