This from the Department of Making Chicken Salad out of Chicken Feathers:
Federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel told an audience dominated by IT contractors that the debacle surrounding the Obama administration’s online health insurance exchange represents “a teachable moment for government.”
This is, of course, swell news. We could all stand to learn from our mistakes as well as those of others. And, as things now stand, the mistakes all seem to have been made by others.
Now, this is teachable moment as the government sees it and defines it. So, as Katherine McIntire Peters of Government Executive reports:
VanRoekel said the administration should be applauded for its boldness in creating the health exchanges [and] offered no explanation for why the administration failed to adequately test the website, HealthCare.gov, prior to launching it Oct. 1, nor did he take questions from the audience.
There, in sum, is what have we learned from this teachable moment.
When the government gets it wrong – and even spectacularly wrong – it offers no explanations and takes no questions.
