Lawrence Summers
By Lawrence Summers
As President Obama has recognised, his administration’s failure to deliver a functioning website that Americans can use to enrol in Obamacare represents an inexcusable error. The Affordable Care Act, which legislates near-universal health insurance, was passed after a more than a century of failed efforts to achieve this progressive dream in this country. It is tragic to be falling short on the mundane task of enrolling Americans in health-care exchanges. Even if the goal of getting the health insurance exchanges working by November 30 is achieved — and objective observers cannot regard this as a certainty — a shadow has been cast on the federal government’s core competence.
What can be learned from this episode? It is too soon to know with confidence, but some preliminary judgments are possible. The dismal track record of the implementation of large-scale information technology initiatives even in rigorous and focused corporate environments points up their difficulty. Unexpected obstacles always arise, deadlines are missed and budgets are overrun. Maximising the prospect of success requires providing for slack in the schedule and the budget, structuring projects with clear accountabilities and frequent checkpoints and assigning oversight responsibility to people with extensive information technology experience rather than general managers with programmatic commitments. Success also requires some trusting but more verifying. A homeowner who hires a general contractor to build an addition, discusses the project and then goes away for six months probably would be unhappy with the result. The same is true for public managers who hire contractors to perform essential tasks but fail to rigorously oversee every step.
Another requisite for success is steadiness and realism in the face of difficulty. Once a project gets off track, there is an overwhelming temptation for everyone involved to circle the wagons and promise rapid repair so as to hold critics at bay. Yet the right response to failure is to surface problems as rapidly as possible and to move more deliberately and carefully — not more quickly. In football, the best teams stick to their playbooks even when they fall behind. When one has fallen behind on a project, it is important to mobilise new resources and management but not to overpromise with respect to how soon and how good a fix is possible.
Large-scale information technology projects in the private sector are hard enough without an organised constituency for failure. It is no exaggeration to say that the failure of Obamacare has been the prophecy and the hope of many of those responsible for funding implementation of the Affordable Care Act, confirming the appointments of those who will do the job and overseeing the results. It is disingenuous for those who stood ready to turn any regulatory detail into an attack ad to profess outrage when guidance was not provided during an election campaign. It is hypocritical for those who held up confirmations of key officials with responsibility for managing federal health-care programmes and whose behaviour deterred many able people from coming into government to lash out at the incompetence of government management. There is a line that must be respected between political opposition and conscious subversion. Everyone understands that when the country is at war, even a war they oppose, vigorous oversight is essential, but, in the end, there is an obligation to support American troops. There is a danger here that goes far beyond delays in access to health insurance. The risk is of a vicious cycle in which poor government performance leads, on the one hand, to overly bold promises of repair and, on the other hand, to reduced funding and support for those doing the work. This generates unmet expectations and disappointment, setting off the cycle anew. In the end, government loses the ability to deliver for citizens and citizens lose respect for government. Our democracy is the loser. WP-BLOOMBERG
By Lawrence Summers
As President Obama has recognised, his administration’s failure to deliver a functioning website that Americans can use to enrol in Obamacare represents an inexcusable error. The Affordable Care Act, which legislates near-universal health insurance, was passed after a more than a century of failed efforts to achieve this progressive dream in this country. It is tragic to be falling short on the mundane task of enrolling Americans in health-care exchanges. Even if the goal of getting the health insurance exchanges working by November 30 is achieved — and objective observers cannot regard this as a certainty — a shadow has been cast on the federal government’s core competence.
What can be learned from this episode? It is too soon to know with confidence, but some preliminary judgments are possible. The dismal track record of the implementation of large-scale information technology initiatives even in rigorous and focused corporate environments points up their difficulty. Unexpected obstacles always arise, deadlines are missed and budgets are overrun. Maximising the prospect of success requires providing for slack in the schedule and the budget, structuring projects with clear accountabilities and frequent checkpoints and assigning oversight responsibility to people with extensive information technology experience rather than general managers with programmatic commitments. Success also requires some trusting but more verifying. A homeowner who hires a general contractor to build an addition, discusses the project and then goes away for six months probably would be unhappy with the result. The same is true for public managers who hire contractors to perform essential tasks but fail to rigorously oversee every step.
Another requisite for success is steadiness and realism in the face of difficulty. Once a project gets off track, there is an overwhelming temptation for everyone involved to circle the wagons and promise rapid repair so as to hold critics at bay. Yet the right response to failure is to surface problems as rapidly as possible and to move more deliberately and carefully — not more quickly. In football, the best teams stick to their playbooks even when they fall behind. When one has fallen behind on a project, it is important to mobilise new resources and management but not to overpromise with respect to how soon and how good a fix is possible.
Large-scale information technology projects in the private sector are hard enough without an organised constituency for failure. It is no exaggeration to say that the failure of Obamacare has been the prophecy and the hope of many of those responsible for funding implementation of the Affordable Care Act, confirming the appointments of those who will do the job and overseeing the results. It is disingenuous for those who stood ready to turn any regulatory detail into an attack ad to profess outrage when guidance was not provided during an election campaign. It is hypocritical for those who held up confirmations of key officials with responsibility for managing federal health-care programmes and whose behaviour deterred many able people from coming into government to lash out at the incompetence of government management. There is a line that must be respected between political opposition and conscious subversion. Everyone understands that when the country is at war, even a war they oppose, vigorous oversight is essential, but, in the end, there is an obligation to support American troops. There is a danger here that goes far beyond delays in access to health insurance. The risk is of a vicious cycle in which poor government performance leads, on the one hand, to overly bold promises of repair and, on the other hand, to reduced funding and support for those doing the work. This generates unmet expectations and disappointment, setting off the cycle anew. In the end, government loses the ability to deliver for citizens and citizens lose respect for government. Our democracy is the loser. WP-BLOOMBERG
