Agreed. While it sounds cool to bring in a "dream team" of technical experts to save the day, it seems likely that additional non-technical issues are at play besides (or in addition to) the technical incompetence of the contractor.
Here's an alternate scenario:
1. The government agency that hired the contractors does not completely understand the business requirements in a way that allows them to effectively communicate them to the contractor. This could be due to numerous factors outside their control such as changing legislation or perhaps because the ACA is so large (900+ pages) and relatively new that there are few experts who understand the minute details sufficiently to specify how the exchange should work.
2. New requirements emerge at the last minute, requiring the contractor to make significant changes. While it is recognized that additional schedule time would be needed to sufficiently implement and test the required features, there is enormous pressure (political and otherwise) to adhere to the October 1 release date, so the implementation of the features is rushed and QA is skipped.
3. There are dependencies on legacy government and commercial systems that are outside the control of the contracting agency and the contractor. The functionality of these systems impact reliability and performance, introduce strange bugs, etc.
5. The software is delivered on time but is woefully inadequate.
While I wouldn't rule out the incompetence of the technical staff, these types of issues can often be traceable to problems that are more in the realm of management.
Here's an alternate scenario:
1. The government agency that hired the contractors does not completely understand the business requirements in a way that allows them to effectively communicate them to the contractor. This could be due to numerous factors outside their control such as changing legislation or perhaps because the ACA is so large (900+ pages) and relatively new that there are few experts who understand the minute details sufficiently to specify how the exchange should work.
2. New requirements emerge at the last minute, requiring the contractor to make significant changes. While it is recognized that additional schedule time would be needed to sufficiently implement and test the required features, there is enormous pressure (political and otherwise) to adhere to the October 1 release date, so the implementation of the features is rushed and QA is skipped.
3. There are dependencies on legacy government and commercial systems that are outside the control of the contracting agency and the contractor. The functionality of these systems impact reliability and performance, introduce strange bugs, etc.
5. The software is delivered on time but is woefully inadequate.
While I wouldn't rule out the incompetence of the technical staff, these types of issues can often be traceable to problems that are more in the realm of management.