The use of Jekyll (or any static HTML generator) is a really huge, positive conceptual step. I mean, we can now make edits -- in Markdown -- to individual blog posts and submit pull requests.<p>Whether they actually honor those requests* is another thing, but this is a really cool step. Even the use of Markdown means that the site/content designers have to <i>really work</i> to obfuscate the content with unnecessary modules/widgets/etc.<p>Regardless of the merits of the administration's policies and initiatives, I hope this catches on. 95% of the government websites I've seen, from city council to federal, could be rendered in static HTML...and maintained much more easily.<p>* edit: Only one way to find out: <a href="https://github.com/dannguyen/healthcare.gov/commit/6438498eab1bc773c55bf567830ac71abcd82c02" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/dannguyen/healthcare.gov/commit/6438498ea...</a>
The folks at Development Seed are doing really awesome work between Prose and MapBox and it's great to see them get some recognition for it.<p>Also a great plug for Jekyll in general. While there can certainly be more worrisome factors than cost for a site, site performance should be one of the most important issues when launching. By completely getting rid of a backing database, page lookup times can be reduced dramatically. As Prose continues to mature, it's getting more and more flexible by the day. Just last week they implemented an extensible "tagging" feature for posts: <a href="https://github.com/prose/prose/issues/464" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/prose/prose/issues/464</a>.<p>In case you haven't noticed, I'm a fan. Kudos to dev seed and big props to the White House team for the willingness to move away from Drupal.
<i>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.</i><p>The article seems to be about a promotional/propaganda CMS for the government, am I missing something?<p><i>"This is such a lean site," said Jon Booth</i><p><i>"This is our ultimate dogfooding experience," said Eric Gundersen</i><p><i>"The work that they're doing is amazing," said Sivak</i><p><i>the site is just one component of the insurance exchanges. Others may not be ready by the October deadline.</i>
This reads like the worst marketing mashup this year:<p>"<i>We knew there were performance and reliability benefits from building the stack on HTML."</i><p>I know there are performance and reliability benefits from talking in English.<p>"<i>You're just talking about content. There just needs to be one server. We're going to have two, with one for backup. That's a deduction of 30 servers</i>"<p>I'm very happy the government decided to skimp on reliability for a public healthcare market.<p>"<i>You can put Wordpress into Amazon but then you'll have problems; it wasn't designed to be a cloud application.</i>"<p>Wait wait wait Wordpress isn't a cloud app? Fuck, someone go tell Hostgator that--apparently it can't be done!<p>"<i>Notably, the HHS team has been using feedback to drive design choices from the beginning, applying the 'lean startup' model to development.</i>"<p>Wow, even the lean startup namedrop.<p>I'd be a lot happier if, instead of putting the Obama webdev team on the gravy train, they spent that same money--you know--actually fixing healthcare. As it is they seem to be just doing free advertising and lead generation on the public dime for the insurance companies.
The UK Government Digital Service still kicks its ass at (a) startup methods) and (b) execution :-)<p><a href="http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/" rel="nofollow">http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/</a><p><a href="https://www.gov.uk/" rel="nofollow">https://www.gov.uk/</a><p><a href="https://www.gov.uk/designprinciples" rel="nofollow">https://www.gov.uk/designprinciples</a>
I'm very eager to see how they handle the actual exchange code.<p>Jekyll and static HTML make a lot of sense for a marketing/informational site (which this appears to be right now), but at some point, they're going to need a dynamic backend (right?). These exchanges will need to aggregate plan info from lots of different insurance carriers and display plans to people based on various bits of user-specific info. Perhaps they can generate static info pages for all of the plans and redirect people to these pages via JavaScript and then pass the actual enrollment off to the insurance companies.<p>If they have to support enrollment and dynamic content, it
will be interesting to see how they do so while adhering to their principles of simplicity.<p>If they don't, it will be an interesting example of how to embrace simple solutions where possible while preventing scope creep.<p>Either way, I'm glad to see this type of innovative development happening.
A link to the GitHub source: <a href="https://github.com/CMSgov/healthcare.gov" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/CMSgov/healthcare.gov</a><p>(The article buries the link to the page with the link: <a href="https://www.healthcare.gov/developers" rel="nofollow">https://www.healthcare.gov/developers</a> )
So, does this mean they learned some important lessons from the $18 million recover.gov site?<p>As for Percussion, is the Sivak person saying that it takes a month to make a simple navigation change? Is this really about the CMS or the red tape involved in getting approval to make the change?
This has not been "iteratively created on Github". It has one commit and 1 commit only. Just sayin...<p><a href="https://github.com/CMSgov/healthcare.gov/commits/master" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/CMSgov/healthcare.gov/commits/master</a><p>Still cool its open sourced though.
Sorry, not feeling very patriotic about this. "by the people, for the people, released back to the people." Meanwhile those of the people who are physicians have had their fees sequestered by 2% <a href="http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/781630" rel="nofollow">http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/781630</a>
and are awash in extra paperwork for trying to prescribe something as simple as diabetic test strips as funding is tightened: <a href="http://www.pharmacist.com/cms-cuts-reimbursement-diabetes-test-supplies" rel="nofollow">http://www.pharmacist.com/cms-cuts-reimbursement-diabetes-te...</a>