Ulysse Sabbagh

Inside the West Wing, where junior researchers monitor Twitter and other social media, officials knew the political controversy had moved beyond the broken website. Now it was about a broken promise. But for Mr. Obama, the mounting criticism was more than political. It felt personal.

The HealthCare.gov website has not been built adequately, that is a certainty. (Read the article, you’ll understand: many different contractors, pieces of software wrongly stitched together and not enough server space.)

I’m wondering what would have happened if Obama made some actual hackers or Silicon Valley devs come to make the system initially. They know how to scale. They know better than suited-up coders how to build incredibly complex architectures. Think of Facebook.