Will the government be able to implement Obamacare smoothly? An “impossible endeavor,” writes a reader who describes himself as “83 years young, married to a beautiful lady for 65 years, with a 54-year career in technology starting with punch cards in the Navy, retired from three major corporations at the director level, last position was with EDS working on Y2K project.” He goes on to list some of the things he believes need to be done, which I quote with his permission. I don’t know enough about this to make a judgment myself, but I have noticed over the years that the federal government has had problems procuring information technology.

RESOURCE REQUIREMENTS

Technical

o Programmers

Depending on what languages are being used will require that skill set—I bet you a lot of that code is written in COBOL and the last time I have seen that skill set was when we worked on Y2K, and we had to bring them out of retirement. …

o Technical and Subject Matter Specialists

Writers to develop Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for the end users (How many will that be???) and SOP’s for operations. …