So, the Obamacare web site isn't working too well - what else is new?
Sometimes it's hell working in IT - for years I tried to get the
enrollment systems right at a major community college.
When I first got there, they were enrolling students using paper and pen
and long lines standing out in the sun. Teachers would be sitting at
long tables enrolling students one by one - it took all day just to
enroll in a few courses.
Enrollment was hell back then!
Then, we got our first PC - an IBM running on DOS. Instructors would
walk all the way across campus just to look at it, not use it, just look
at it. The college IT director couldn't understand what we were going to
do with all that hard drive space!
Today, there are over 5,000 PCs on the main campus and another 5,000
spread out over twenty computer labs on five campuses.
And, enrollment is still hell!
The school has at least three Oracle databases for student enrollment,
one for credit card payments, personal data like adds and drops, grades,
and the online library database, and then the course database. Not to
mention the 3,000 online courses using the Blackboard database! Who do
they think is going to run all this technology with me gone? Go figure.
Somebody should write ONE simple program called 'schools'. Go figure.
'Some say health-care site's problems highlight flawed federal IT policies'
Technology:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/some-say-health-care-sites-problems-highlight-flawed-federal-it-policies/2013/10/09/d558da42-30fe-11e3-8627-c5d7de0a046b_story.html>
