The media has convinced us all that Kathleen Sebelius, President Obama’s designated point person re the implementation of the government website to support the Affordable Care Act, should be fired for failing to have taken a much more intelligent and well-informed approach to manage the design and roll out of the federal government ‘web portal’ intended to be used for signing up millions of Americans who need affordable healthcare.
After all, we all now know the roll-out hasn’t been simply ‘soft’, the snarled software project has increasingly becoming a harbinger of potentially much worse to come: the possible failure to sign up a minimum number of people required to prove the basic economic thesis of ACA.
This writer has been involved in multiple, enterprise-level technology initiatives over the past 20 years. Most have been related to the financial industry or the insurance industry. Mission critical stuff that has been the backbone to $ multi-billion industries. The most important thing I learned is that software is called software for a reason, and this particular project is particularly complex when considering the the number of independent federal and state government databases, as well as insurance company exchange member platforms that need to be linked and synced in order to make the platform work.
That said, when HHS Secretary says “we’re now going to bring in an A-team of technology experts to fix this..”, that’s when heads need to roll, starting with this Secretary–who along the way, has embarrassed herself by appearing on late night comedy talk shows.
Rule #1 re PR Crisis Management: Get out in front of the problem the moment it arises. DO NOT LET THE MEDIA MANIPULATE THE STORY WHILE YOU ARE TOO BUSY HOLDING INTERNAL STAFF MEETINGS DEBATING ON WHAT TO SAY TOMORROW IN RESPONSE TO YESTERDAY’S TWEETS.
Rule #1 re Leadership: DO NOT POINT FINGERS, DO NOT BURY YOUR HEAD IN THE SAND, DO NOT CLAIM TO BE “WAITING ON INTERNAL REPORTS THAT WILL IDENTIFY WHO SCREWED UP”…INSTEAD…YOU NEED TO MAKE AN EXECUTIVE PRO-ACTIVE DECISION AND IMMEDIATELY RECRUIT THE VERY MOST RESPECTED PROBLEM SOLVERS, REGARDLESS OF “ADDITIONAL COST”.
Dept of HHS ACA Website Snarl: PR Crisis Management Report Card: "D" For Just Plain Dumb
No comments:
Post a Comment