Almost two weeks ago I sent to the Duluth News Tribune about the computer problems with the Affordable Care Act. I had given up on its being published because of the huge number of election letters the DNT has been publishing.
At a meeting this morning, a friend said he liked my letter in the DNT. I was surprised and checked with my iPhone. It was below the last letter I looked at when I read the DNT online this morning. I would have seen it if I had just scrolled a bit further down.
You can find the published version at http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/282477/. Chuck Frederick, the opinion editor, did a good job of editing my letter, adding a phrase and some punctuation. What I actually sent follows:
A major computer system has problems; what's new? In this case, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) software for signing up. I've been working with computer systems for over fifty years and Murphy's law is still in force. If something can go wrong, it will!
Decades ago a customer computer crashed regularly. It was my job to find out why. It took months of asking questions until I received sufficient information from the customer to isolate the problem to a single program. That information allowed me to determine the crash was related to a hardware problem.
Murphy's law is working today in almost every computer and every program we use. How often do you install version x.0 of some software and within weeks you receive version x.0.1?
Those working on the ACA software have my sympathy. May you ask the right questions.
