Healthcare.gov: Code Developed By The People And For The People, Released Back To The People

This new flagship federal .gov website is "open by design, open by default." That's a huge win for the American people.

As the first website to be demonstrated by a sitting President of the United States, Healthcare.gov already occupies an unusual place in history. In October, it will take on an even more important historic role, guiding millions of Americans through the process of choosing health insurance.

How a website is built or designed may seem mundane to many people, but when the site in question is focused upon such an important function, what it looks like and how it works matter. Last week, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) relaunched Healthcare.gov with a new appearance and modern technology that is unusual in federal-government websites.

"It's fast, built in static HTML, completely scalable and secure," said Bryan Sivak, chief technology officer of HHS, in an interview. "It's basically setting up a web server. That's the beauty of it." What makes such an ambitious experiment in social coding more unusual is that the larger political and health-care policy context that it's being been built within is more fraught with tension and scrutiny than any other arena in the federal government.