Former Obama White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs Says Obamacare Rollout “Excruciatingly Embarrassing”

OUCH, THIS ONE IS GOING TO LEAVE A MARK …

Former Obama White House Press Secretary and top aid Robert Gibbs calls Obamacare roll-out  “Excruciatingly Embarrassing!!!” Gibbs stated on MSNBC’s Now that “This was bungled badly. This is not a server problem [where] just too many people came to the website. This is a website architecture problem.” Gibbs also went on to say that individuals need to be fired.  How bad is it when an individual like Gibbs is coming out and stating the obvious as Barack Obama and current WH press secretary Carney, just call it glitchy?

From The Blaze:

“This is excruciatingly embarrassing for the White House and for the Department of Health and Human Services,” Gibbs said on MSNBC Monday. “This was bungled badly. This is not a server problem [where] just too many people came to the website. This is a website architecture problem.”

Repeating the “excruciatingly embarrassing” charge, Gibbs said it’s “not fatal because there are still many weeks and days to go before the enrollment period closes at the end of March.”

He said buying health care through the exchanges is different from a one-time music purchase on iTunes, but that “if they don’t get these glitches figured out fast, people aren’t going to come back” to compare costs and make their final decisions.

“I hope they’re working day and night to get this done and when they get it fixed I hope they fire some people that were in charge,” Gibbs said. “We knew there were going to be some glitches, right? But these are glitches that go, quite frankly, beyond the pale of what should be expected.”

One Response to “Former Obama White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs Says Obamacare Rollout “Excruciatingly Embarrassing””

1. Caribbean on October 15th, 2013 8:37 pm

   Well I can’t say that I am surprised that this system is one royal SNAFU……… Let me see, they gave the contract to CGI Federal on a sole source award basis rather than bidding it out as a RFP. Mistake #1. Probably paid a lot more for the system than needed and definitely didn’t get the best firm. CGI is a Canadian firm. Not that I have anything against Canadian firms, but they didn’t even give all of the reputable US companies a chance. WHY NOT??? Interesting……..

   Those of us that have suffered though other CGI system SNAFUs are not surprised at the roll-out. Sure looks a lot like the eVA Procurement system that they designed for the Commonwealth of Virginia back in the early 2000s. The first 4-5 years of that was a real mess. Yes, I said YEARS. So don’t expect any quick fixes. They basically took an existing system they had designed for someone else and “modified” it to work for Virginia. Only problem was it didn’t work. I was the Procurement Director at one of the Beta test agencies. The search engine was the absolute worst engine I have ever used, then or now. And every time they needed to make an update to add system functions that should have been designed into the system at the beginning, users had to go through multiple steps to get to something that should have been an easily accessible drop down menu. Sound familiar.

   So hang on to your saddle because we are in for a long ride on this horse before it gets better.

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