CNN reporter Laurie Segall said tech industry executives are "shaking their heads" at the prospect $600 million was spent to build the dysfunctional healthcare.gov Tuesday morning.
One executive suggested the administration could have fixed the technical issues with "a room full of developers, a pizza, and a deadline. And maybe a million dollars."
However, the federal government's inability to implement an efficient fix underscores significant problems with the federal contracting system, Segall pointed out:
CAROL COSTELLO: […] Laurie, I know you've spoken Laurie with some of these technology executives. What did they tell you?
LAURIE SEGALL: Yeah. actually I spoke with a bunch of tech executives just last night about Abamacare and they were just shaking their heads. And we've heard this before, that $600 million couldn't have been spent to make this website. One of them said to me. I said, "what are they going to tell Obama, how to fix this kind of thing?" He said "get a room full of developers, a pizza, and a deadline, and maybe a million dollars and you could have done it a lot better. But I think the discussion they're going to be having along the lines of healthcare.gov is really the idea of the federal procurement system and there's a lot of problems with government, with innovation and the way they go about this -- contracting out to other developers, not bringing the best people in-house. You know, Obama is going to be sitting with some of the best and brightest in the tech realm. I can only imagine that they'll have a larger conversation because Silicon Valley needs Washington and Washington needs Silicon Valley.