The pains of government technology: An investigation into the rollout of Healthcare.gov
Abstract
Governments regularly rely on technology to implement policy. While technology development
itself is normally not a part of legislative directives, it is an indispensable part
of how laws play out in citizens’ lives. The integration of technology and policy,
however, does not always go smoothly, a reality often borne out in the public media.
The implementation of the landmark Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act through
its web site Healthcare.gov is, arguably, one of the most important examples of this
connection between federal policy, technology, and media. Unfortunately for the administration
and its supporters, the website faced myriad issues from long wait-times to server
errors that brought the historic legislation to a standstill. The media covered the
event closely, employing a variety of viewpoints and methodologies that helped and
hurt the administration’s efforts. This project looks into the media coverage surrounding
the website four months before and two months after its initial rollout. While it
does not explain the cause of difficulties plaguing the website, it does attempt to
explain their portrayal. To this end, the project analyzes media coverage from the
left and the right in online newspapers and televised broadcasts to understand what
factors affected the tone of the media’s coverage. It finds that media ideology and
subject matter shaped the tone of the coverage but in unexpected ways. External factors
like Congressional hearings and the 2013 government shutdown may also have had an
impact on the tone of the coverage. Clearer definitions and further research are needed
here.
Description
Public Policy Honors Thesis of Highest Distinction
Type
Honors thesisDepartment
Public Policy StudiesSubject
Healthcare.govPatient Protection and Affordable Care Act
Government Information Technology
Public Discourse
Media Analysis
Obamacare
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/9531Citation
Shah, Priyang (2015). The pains of government technology: An investigation into the rollout of Healthcare.gov.
Honors thesis, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/9531.Collections
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