obamacare website developers: it's not our fault

8/18/2019 Obamacare website developers: It's not our fault

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Obamacare website developers: It's not our fault

Story highlights A third House committee is investigating the HealthCare.gov website issues A

House committee holds the first hearing on website problems ThursdayDevelopers blame each other

and the government, but not themselvesA problem with the entry portal clogged up the system when

it opened, they say

Contractors who helped develop the embattled HealthCare.gov website blame each other and the

government, but not themselves, in testimony prepared for Thursday's first congressional hearing on

the problems engulfing the online enrollment system.

House Energy and Commerce Committee members will grill officials from CGI Federal, Optum/QSSI,

Equifax Workforce Solutions and Serco at the hearing to examine technological problems faced by

people trying to buy health insurance under President Barack Obama's signature reforms.

Complaints of inability to log in, lengthy delays, incorrect information relayed to insurancecompanies and other problems have plagued the website since it opened to much fanfare on October

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In the first detailed account of what happened, the prepared testimony describes a convoluted

system of multiple companies designing parts of the website under oversight of the federal Centers

for Medicaid and Medicare Services, a part of the Department of Health and Human Services.

According to the advance statements, the system had been tested as required but still buckled under

an unanticipated flood of visitors when it opened.

Cheryl Campbell, senior vice president at CGI Federal, will tell the panel that testing of the site met

industry standards and "passed eight required technical reviews prior to going live on October 1,"

according to her prepared testimony.

"Unfortunately, in systems this complex with so many concurrent users, it is not unusual to discover

problems that need to be addressed once the software goes into a live production environment,"

Campbell's advance testimony says.

"This is true regardless of the level of formal end-to-end performance testing -- no amount of testing

within reasonable time limits can adequately replicate a live environment of this nature," she added.

Campbell blames initial problems on the "enterprise identity management" function known as EIDM

that serves as the entry portal to the website.

The EIDM tool designed by another contractor, which Campbell's advance testimony doesn't name,

"created a bottleneck that prevented the vast majority of users from accessing" Healthcare.gov when

it opened, according to Campbell.

However, Andrew Slavitt of Optum, which designed the EIDM tool, says in his prepared testimony

that an unexpected high volume of people registered at the start and overwhelmed the entry portal

and other aspects of the website.

He puts the blame on the government, saying: "It appears that one of the reasons for the high


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concurrent volume at the registration system was a late decision requiring consumers to register for

an account before they could browse for insurance products."

"This may have driven higher simultaneous usage of the registration system that wouldn't have

occurred if consumers could 'window shop' anonymously," Slavitt's testimony says, adding that the

EIDM tool was able to process the high volumes with low to zero error rates by October 8.

A third contractor, Equifax Workplace Solutions, says its role providing "real time verification of

income and employment" information submitted by applicants has worked properly, according to the

advance testimony by its corporate counsel, Lynn Spellecy.

Equifax conducted "multiple load and stress tests" that showed it could process up to 120,000

verification requests per hour or more, which it estimated as more than any peak period would

demand, Spellecy's testimony says.

Campbell also says in her prepared testimony that improvements to the EIDM tool have allowed

more users to proceed to the website's main function of providing a range of choices and information

on available subsidies for them to choose health insurance required by law.

"More individuals have enrolled in qualified insurance plans; however, the increased number of

transactions ... have caused system performance issues (such as slow response times or data

assurance issues) that now need to be addressed through tuning, optimization and applicationimprovements," her testimony says.

The White House and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius make the same

argument, saying the initial problems in accessing the website have eased.

Sebelius has brought in tech experts from Silicon Valley and elsewhere to work with the contractors

on eliminating problems, with acting Office of Management and Budget Director Jeff Zients

overseeing the effort.

"The work of constantly improving the website will continue day by day," White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday. "A week from now, it's going to be better than it is today."

The Energy and Commerce Committee isn't the only one probing Obamacare in light of its issues.


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So, too, is the House Ways and Means Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform

Committee.

The latter sent an eight-page letter Wednesday night to 11 contracting firms involved in putting

together HealthCare.gov giving them two days to provide documents, meeting lists and all

communications with the Obama administration on the project, committee spokeswoman Caitlin

Carroll said.

The fact all three committees are in the same chamber -- which is led by Republicans -- is likely no

coincidence. Everyone is talking about this! I can see why now...The GOP has and continues to be

staunchly opposed to Obamacare, even trying unsuccessfully to make defunding or delaying it

requirement before it would fund the government.

The White House has been pushing back against not just Republicans, but some Democrats who

have urged an extension of the open enrollment period beyond March 31 and/or a delay in penalties

for those who don't sign up for insurance on time because of the website issues.

The Obama administration is moving to clarify confusion on when people need to sign up for health

care, and it has plans to issue new guidelines to this point soon.

Still, Health and Human Services spokeswoman Joanne Peters insisted "the individual mandate

timing" -- i.e. the requirement for a person to have insurance by March -- "has not changed. ... It was

true this morning. It is true tonight."

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/23/politics/congress-obamacare-website/
http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/23/politics/congress-obamacare-website/http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/23/politics/congress-obamacare-website/

obamacare website developers: it's not our fault

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