The failure of the website shows there were not enough back-up systems in place – for example, the router used to geoblock that reportedly failed should have been deployed in a pair, "as is best practice", said Guy. "It'll be an interesting witch hunt," he added.
He tells me the failure of the website itself has undermined an important part of the Obama coalition.
Sebelius is faulted, for the most part deservedly, for presiding over the initial failure of the website.
There are many reasons for the EU to much more robustly police Google, but the failure of newspaper websites to garner enough traffic is not one of them.
If true, this could be the core explanation for the failures of the website as a whole.
This statement will also have to explain how to request an accessible version of non-accessible content upon request and provide a hyper-link to a "feedback mechanism" to enable users to notify any failures of the website or app to comply with the requirements of this directive.
Last month, the head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, David Kalisch, said the failure of the census website would cost taxpayers about $30m.
While the failure of an equivalent website overseas (say, John Lewis in the UK) would cause uproar and millions of dollars would be lost in revenue, Myer chief Bernie Brooks said online sales equated to just 1% of Myer's annual turnover and that "there will be no impact at all on our profitability or our overall sales".
But the challenges facing the new U.S. Digital Service run much deeper than the failure of one government website.
There is simply no excuse for the failure of the government website to meet the public's expectations -- low as they were, they still reflected some measure of confidence in the system.
Israeli officials and security experts have rejected claims that a cyber-attack by the hacker group Anonymous was behind the failure of several government websites on Sunday, including those of the Mossad, the Shin Bet secret service, the Israeli army and some government ministries.
