Not Just The Government’s Playbook

The 13 principles in the U.S. CIO's Digital Services Playbook are applicable for everyone.

Whenever I hear someone say that “government should be run like a business,” my first reaction is “do you know how badly most businesses are run?” Seriously. I do not want my government to run like a business — whether it’s like the local restaurants that pop up and die like wildflowers, or megacorporations that sell broken products, whether financial, automotive, or otherwise.

If you read some elements of the press, it’s easy to think that healthcare.gov is the first time that a website failed. And it’s easy to forget that a large non-government website was failing, in surprisingly similar ways, at roughly the same time. I’m talking about the Common App site, the site high school seniors use to apply to most colleges in the US. There were problems with pasting in essays, problems with accepting payments, problems with the app mysteriously hanging for hours, and more.

I don’t mean to pick on Common App; you’ve no doubt had your own experience with woefully bad online services: insurance companies, Internet providers, even online shopping. I’ve seen my doctor swear at the Epic electronic medical records application when it crashed repeatedly during an appointment. So, yes, the government builds bad software. So does private enterprise...