ElectoServices! Part Trois! Technology hop-scotch!

Now I know what you’re thinking, friend, after reading Part Un et Part Deux: I’m trying to do business here! I can’t waste years and millions of dollars – heck, if I had millions to waste it wouldn’t be on a web site!

Truth, my friend. But the good news is that you don’t have to do that – you can instead play Technology hop-scotch. 

My Dad was a home builder, and one of the very many smart things he taught me is that there comes a point where it is easier and cheaper to build a new house than to fix up an old one. (He said that point was the first time anyone said “Let’s remove this wall.”)  Technology is like that; it’s often much cheaper to build something new than to upgrade a bunch of horrible old legacy stuff.

When I was a young cub reporter wandering the Pacific Rim I was amazed by how hard it was to get a phone.  The infrastructure in, say, the Philippines was so minimal that you could not get phone lines for new homes or businesses. They never had the landline infrastructure we took for granted in the United States.

A decade later, when US television shows were still using cell phones to show that someone was rich, I went back and was amazed to discover that everyone had cell phones – even kids. 

Which neatly demonstrates both sides of this dilemma: If you have millions of customers using your landlines you can’t just abandon them, or all their shiny money.  If you don’t…well, have at it, and all that shiny money.

And that’s the problem with HealthCare.gov; not the shiny new web site, but all those dusty decades of IRS records…

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