Kathleen Sebelius is the secretary of health and human services for the Obama administration. If you're outside the US, or not a news hawk, she's currently in the spotlight because of the trouble laden rollout of the Affordable Care Act. A key component of the execution of the act is the ability for citizens to browse, review, and purchase health insurance through government operated websites. Since going live, many of the websites have shown themselves to be bug ridden and unable to fulfill their core function. Mrs. Sebelius is currently being attacked by pundits and politicians for these technology failures. I'm not interested in commenting on the political nature of the healthcare act, however I think there are some simple lessons to be taken away from the program rollout.

Several years ago, Blue Bridge was working with a local company as web application developers. We had already built one application for them on Joomla! that allowed their remote employees to submit complicated forms to a central database. They wanted us to provide a quote on another project they were executing for one of their clients. After going to a few meetings, my client emailed me and asked what technology the project would be built with? I replied that it would be built on the LAMP stack. If you're not familiar, the LAMP stack is the underlying technology for nearly every site on the web because it's free, open source, and proven. The next day I got an email from my client saying that their client's IT department wanted the project built on a .Net Microsoft stack because that was "better." Even though it was going to cost Blue Bridge our role on the project I told my client, "Then build it in .Net. Give them what they want." These days, I still agree with the sentiment to give the client what they want, or more accurately what they need, however my response now would be: "If they want an IT department built application, why are they asking for quotes from professional developers?"

Blue Bridge is based out of Portland, which has a thriving technology scene. We know lots of other graphic designers, developers, and web specialists. I regularly hear complaints about working with developers. A few weeks ago I was talking to one of these web designers about a site she manages and she made that common complaint and then asked me, "Why is it so hard to find a good WP developer?" It's not just the WP market where it is difficult to find good development help, it's the whole open source ecosystem, including Joomla.