[hga]

Bingo. The government, which took the role of integrator, kept making requirements changes, right through the week before launch. They also did integration testing ... and of course ignored that that failed hard.

I can't see any way CGI Federal et. al. could have won.

[marcosdumay]

> The government ... kept making requirements changes

So, just like every client every developer ever had?

[hga]

If they were all that bad we'd never get anything done.

In drafting the above I removed some thoughts about CGI Federal pushing back, since that struck me as something that probably wouldn't work in this context. But I for one have pushed back on clueless customers before, saying the usual "this change will cost time, money and/or quality".

Or, heck, I'll bet CGI did some push back, but there's no reason to believe the inexperienced bureaucrats and political appointees in HHS and CMS would have listened to them. We've been reliably told they were told it was going to hell, and there's that one fed who switching in March to "I hope it won't be a Third World experience" which I take as a sign he saw trouble on the horizon.