Health Exchange Delays Tied to Software Crash in Early Rush

John Hart/Wisconsin State Journal, via Associated Press

A job center in Madison, Wis., was set up for consumers to enroll in the online health insurance exchanges.

WASHINGTON — The technical problems that have hampered enrollment in the online health insurance exchanges resulted from the failure of a major software component, designed by private contractors, that crashed under the weight of millions of users last week, federal officials said Monday.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press

Todd Park, the White House's chief technology officer, blamed a software failure for the federal Web site's problems.

Todd Park, President Obama's top technology adviser, said the failure occurred in the part of the Web site that lets people create user accounts at the beginning of the insurance sign-up process. The crash prevented many people from viewing any of their insurance options or gaining access to information on what federal subsidies might be available.

"At lower volumes, it would work fine," Mr. Park said of the Web site, healthcare.gov. "At higher volumes, it has problems."

"Right now," he added, "we've got what we think we need. The contractors have sent reinforcements. They are working 24-7. We just wish there was more time in a day."

In some cases, the Web site does not recognize users who established accounts before Oct. 1, when the online marketplaces opened for consumers to shop for insurance. Other users are prevented from establishing accounts. Some who successfully established a marketplace account received an e-mail asking them to verify their e-mail addresses, but the link provided did not work.

The identification of the software component as the main cause of the Web site's problems was the most detailed explanation that federal officials have given since the online marketplaces opened. The officials also rejected mounting criticism about the Web site's overall design, saying that the rest of the site appears ready to handle the large volume of traffic.

But because of the initial failures, other parts of the complex system have yet to be proved under the intense strain of real-world conditions. And outside experts said that White House officials should have spent more time tending to the computer code and technology of the Web site, rather than recruiting Hollywood celebrities to promote it.

"It's poorly designed," said Luke Chung, the president of a database company in Virginia who has publicly criticized the site in recent days. "People higher up are given the excuse that there are too many users. That's a convenient excuse for the managers to pass up the chain."

Those comments echoed similar criticism on sites across the Internet, where Web designers and developers speculated about the reasons for the ongoing problems at the Web site, healthcare.gov. One discussion on the popular Web site reddit.com was titled "How not to optimize a website."

White House officials declined to identify the private contractors who had built the account creation function, citing a decision to keep that information private. They said the contractors had moved that part of the new system to beefed-up hardware and were busy rewriting the software code to make it more robust and efficient.

In the past week, wait times have dropped by half, officials said.

Officials said they had also added staff members at call centers to provide customers an alternative to the online system. The Web site currently says that people "in a hurry" can apply faster at a government call center using a toll-free telephone number, (800) 318-2596. But an operator at the call center said Monday that he could not help because he, too, was "experiencing technical difficulties with the Web site."

Aneesh Chopra, who preceded Mr. Park as the federal government's chief technology officer and helped create an earlier version of healthcare.gov, said he was confident that the system would be working effectively in the coming weeks.

Mr. Chopra noted that when United Airlines and Continental merged their online reservations systems, it took weeks to iron out problems.

"This is par for the course for large-scale I.T. projects," Mr. Chopra said. "We wish we could launch bug-free, but in reality that's not that easy to do. The reality is that if you have a product that people want, people will tolerate glitches because they expect them."

Administration officials said they had relied heavily on contractors to build and operate the federal exchanges, under supervision of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In the weeks before the marketplaces opened for business, those contractors expressed high optimism that their computer systems would work.

The prime contractor for the federal exchange — CGI Federal, a unit of the CGI Group, based in Montreal — and the company operating a "data services hub" for the government — Quality Software Services Inc., a unit of the UnitedHealth Group — told Congress at a hearing on Sept. 10 that they were ready for a surge of users when enrollment opened on Oct. 1.

Quentin Hardy contributed reporting from San Francisco.

Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang

Health Exchange Delays Tied to Software Crash in Early Rush

Dengan url

http://healtybodyguard.blogspot.com/2013/10/health-exchange-delays-tied-to-software.html

Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya

Health Exchange Delays Tied to Software Crash in Early Rush

namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link

Health Exchange Delays Tied to Software Crash in Early Rush

sebagai sumbernya