Submission + - Open-source advocates to government: Let us help you fix healthcare.gov (nbcnews.com) 1
sunzoomspark writes: As computer experts hired by the U.S. government scramble to fix the much-maligned healthcare.gov website, a corps of independent kibitzers is chiming in from around the world, publicizing coding flaws that they’ve discovered and offering suggestions for fixing them.
Much of the constructive criticism is coming from members of the “open source” community, a passionate but loose-knit group that advocates openness and collaboration as a means of writing better computer software. Their desire to help solve the federal government’s website woes in part stems from an early decision by the Department of Health and Human Services to make the healthcare.gov code available for examination – a promise that was never fully fulfilled.
Much of the constructive criticism is coming from members of the “open source” community, a passionate but loose-knit group that advocates openness and collaboration as a means of writing better computer software. Their desire to help solve the federal government’s website woes in part stems from an early decision by the Department of Health and Human Services to make the healthcare.gov code available for examination – a promise that was never fully fulfilled.
