That's how it came across on the TV news. To hear the newsies tell it, if the government had possessed a specialized group of experts the adminstration could have brought Healthcare.gov smoothly into service. The newsies talked about liberalizing government hiring rules so such a group could make a job offer to talented people in a timely fashion. And some other stuff.
It won't work. Government departments are staffed with civil servants, lawyers, defeated politicians, and political cronies. Losers. This kind of people couldn't design a tic-tac-toe board. No way can a government department do anything creative. To build a website, you need engineers. Good engineers don't work for the government. Engineers want to work at places where they can do new designs, and see their designs get built and shipped. All the government does is paperwork. Engineers hate paperwork, and so they take jobs out in the real economy, where they get to do real work.
When the government needs something designed, it needs to go out for bids to private industry. Far as I heard, Obama didn't do that. He retained control of the design deep inside HHS and did a no bid contract award to a Canadian firm with a dubious record. The Canadians did what they were told to do by HHS and what they were told to do didn't work.
Moral of the story. Go out for bids. Get three bids. Pick the low cost bidder, as long as he is qualified (you think he can do the job). Even better, go out for firm fixed fee bids. Cost plus bids will be expensive. Only if you cannot get firms to submit firm fixed fee bids do you accept cost plus bids.
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