http://www.eventbrite.com/e/saving-healthcaregov-tickets-118...
Let us know if you have questions! Or if you want to help.
UPDATE: we seem to be sold out. Trying to find a larger venue. In the meantime, feel free to sign up on the waiting list and you'll get an email as soon as we find a room with more capacity.
How do you, as technologically savvy people who are in a better position than most to understand the grave transgressions of the NSA, reconcile your support of an administration that has shown complete disregard for our privacy and civil liberties (specifically within the scope of the NSA/Snowden scandal) with your inherent duty, as an engineer of powerful systems, to above all further the public good? As a subtext, what are your thoughts on continuing to further said administration's political aims in one arena while they restrict your rights and livelihood* in another?
Furthermore, and more on topic, what steps have you taken to place privacy concerns at the forefront when creating a service that consumes vast amounts of personal and medical information from millions of people?
Last, as someone who has been "on the inside" do you see corruption as a large problem with government procurement? To what extent did corruption create the situation that you were called in to fix with the original HealthCare.gov fiasco?
*assuming, of course, that the NSA/Snowden revelations have hurt US tech interests
Edit: Mods, if you disapprove of this comment feel free to delete it. That said, I think these are some important questions that need to be asked.
The NSA revelations aren't just some small political transgressions, this is a rather world shaking development that shows we have been subject to vast, malicious (i.e. not for our good but for the good of others), and illegal surveillance that has steadily eroded many of our God given* rights and liberties. On top of that, this is something the administration has wholeheartedly supported and gotten in bed with, and shows no signs of turning back (beyond token political acts that will in the end accomplish very little, if anything).
So, wouldn't you question further actions by someone who has proven themselves to act against you so wholeheartedly? Myself, while I normally would have been overjoyed at a healthcare overhaul in this country, am now extremely suspicious of the motivations behind it. Why would this administration act in our favor when they have been acting against us for so long?
Thus, my question to brandonb :)
*as per the Declaration of Independence
Edit: I would say a good analogy would be: Assuming I were Charlie Brown, at what point do I begin to doubt Lucy's psychiatric advice when she's pulled the football out from under me so many times?
People often think that the failings of a system are chiefly because of the motivations of the actors in the system. But what's more accurate is that the failings are often because of the structure of the system, and the inhabitants often don't feel they have the ability to change the structure.
The least effective way to change the behavior of a system is to twiddle the various buttons and knobs that each inhabitant has ready access to. The most effective way to change the behavior of a system is to change the overall goal of the system, which would necessitate a complete restructuring.
So that's why it is easy to believe that various NSA wrongdoings aren't entirely because of nefarious motivations (although that is probably part of it), and very much driven by system structure (log and analyze data) that simply weren't "checked" as their technological tools and abilities increased over time. What many of us have failed to realize is that our own personal security has been a form of security-through-obscurity in the past. We can put personal data up on a website and not tell anyone, and before search spiders, it might have stayed private. But we can't expect such a website to stay private these days, because of how technology has increased. It's the same with our private data, and how our browsing habits can be mined to create freakishly accurate personal profiles. There was never any privacy protection there to begin with other than obscurity, and we just convinced ourselves it was there by believing in social mores that hadn't been challenged until technology increased too much.
Meanwhile, the health system was about constructing an entirely new structure/system for health insurance, benefits, and penalties.
So... I wouldn't say it is a matter of compartmentalizing. It's more a matter of appreciating that the government is a huge collection of disparate systems and motivations, and that there can be simultaneous breakdowns and successes.
When was it shown that this was not for our good but for the good of others? I think you may be confusing the ends and the means. If the means turned out to not be good for us, that does not mean the ends they were trying to achieve weren't for our good. It just means they failed.
(just saying, it matters to be correct on this topic)
If you want to change it, change it from the inside.
Thats is what they are doing.
People can protest on the streets or online but changing the government from the inside will be more effective.
The people who join the government to try to change it from the inside are the same people who, five years later, complain that their hands are tied and they can't effect meaningful change for the better and must continue along the well-trodden path of obedience. I think Obama is a great example here, but I'm sure there are many others.
Government is not like a company you can boycott; it is an unavoidable attribute of human society. The operative questions are how are you participating in it to achieve your aims, and how effectively.
If these YC alums, etc decide they don't want to be a "cog in the machine", how else can they have improved the healthcare web site?
> an administration that has shown complete disregard for our privacy and civil liberties
Is it really true that this is the case for this administration more so than other administrations? Admittedly the increase in opportunity for surveillance has been huge in the last couple decades so the quality of the comparison degrades as you go further back in time, but what the NSA has been doing seems entirely in line with what they've been doing for decades. To be clear, what they've been doing for decades is really, really shitty and I'm glad people are finally outraged, but then wouldn't your view require basically boycotting working with any administration ever? I don't think it's an unreasonable proposition to not hold hostage policies that are potentially worthy just for a single (however significant) issue that you disagree with.
> your support of an administration
> continuing to further said administration's political aims
This leads to me to my next point: it seems like your comment assumes that this was done purely out of a desire to help a political figure, instead of considering the possibility that the volunteers may think that Healthcare.gov is a worthy goal or at least that its brokenness is negatively affecting the American people (I don't think there's any disagreement across the political spectrum on this latter point). That's an awfully cynically political way to look at the world, and I don't think it's accurate to assume that that viewpoint is shared by the volunteers. I think it's probably a safe assumption that the volunteers acted more out of a desire to see hc.gov working than to see Obama's political capital enhanced per se.
Now if only you had asked something about technology.
False equivalence. The correct analogy would be "Do you quit your job when your company does something you don't like?"
Many people would answer yes to that.
Smart people often disagree about things in this world, including in particular whether the actions of the NSA show "complete disregard for our privacy and civil liberties" and whether they're justified or not.
Also, half the idea of democracy is to compromise with other people. Thinking that people shouldn't do any work for the government because they don't agree with some of the actions of that government is ridiculous.
Were the original developers developing against a (mostly) static spec, or were the terms constantly being changed up until October of last year?
Are there any plans to carry this forward and redesign some of the state exchanges?
Cannot speak directly to experience of original developers, but I could see moving target as being an issue.
Would love to see our code open sourced someday and be useful to others, especially state exchanges, but that is a long-term goal. Currently we are laser-focused on getting everything ready to ship by next open enrollment.
I mean, the original site was awarded to CGI Inc without any biding process... and they aren't even a US company. Why did we not have US professionals/companies build this thing the first go-round?
I could have imagined a High-Tech All-Stars sort of thing... each major US tech company sends 1 or 2 representatives to collaborate and work together to build this new long-lasting piece of national infrastructure.
Check's already cashed, right?
Technologically "hard" or Politically "hard"
?
[1] http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOp...