Healthcare.gov – Companies Behind ACA Health Exchange's Construction And Its Technical Failure

[Zorra]

Healthcare.gov – Companies Behind Obamacare Health Exchange's Construction And Its Technical Failure

The federal government relied on a host of private companies for the information technology used in the Web portal. According to a June 2013 Government Accountability Office report, companies selected for the IT work included Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation (NYSE:BAH), CGI Federal Inc (NYSE:GIB), the Mitre Corporation and Quality Software Service Inc.

Booz Allen worked on eligibility and enrollment systems, and is due at least $6 million for IT work, according to the GAO report. CGI Federal will be paid at least $86 million for work from 2011 to 2013. The company was paid a total of $634 million for its work on the website, according to Digital Trends. Mitre should earn $1.7 million and QSSI should earn $50 million, according to an International Business Times tally.
snip---
The four companies either didn’t return requests for comment or information from IBTimes, or declined to comment. The amounts cited represent money obligated by the federal government, which may not yet have been spent. "We are spending 24 hours a day, seven days a week working with our client and working with our partners in order to stabilize the enrolment [process] and finish the roll-out of this very complex project,” said Lorne Gorber, a CGI spokesman, to Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper on Thursday.
snip---
Another company involved in the IT work, specifically in making a system to confirm the identities of enrollees, is Experian plc (LON:EXPN), according to the Wall Street Journal. Experian declined to comment to the Journal.

Open Secrets: Experian Contributions to Federal Candidates

Open Secrets: Experian Summary

FYI

[Ian David]

1. Booz Allen... AGAIN? Why do we keep giving them money to do shit for us? n/t

[Zorra]

13. Good question. Here's a little more Booz Allen for ya;

Todd Park

Prior to his career in government, Park was the co-founder of two successful health information technology companies. He began his business career as a consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton
snip---
At HHS, he has been a champion of applying open innovation and the Lean Startup approach to government initiatives.[10] Under Park, HHS has applied open innovation—sometimes called crowdsourcing -- to leverage the distributed intelligence of people outside of government. According to the New York Times, Park believes that releasing health data through HealthData.gov will support the agency's public health goals and catalyze new business opportunities in mhealth and eHealth.[11] It's for reasons like this that in 2010, Fast Company magazine named him one of the 100 Most Innovative People in Business.[12]

Park has been running his part of the massive government agency "like a Silicon Valley company," according to the Atlantic.[1] That approach was particularly relevant in the development of HealthCare.gov, the first government website that provides consumers with a searchable database of public and private health insurance plans available across the U.S. by zip code.[13]

The initial version of HealthCare.gov, which was deployed on July 1, 2010, was built in 90 days.[14] HealthCare.gov was cited by the Kaiser Family Foundation as one of the early highlights in the implementation of the healthcare reform implementation progress....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Park

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversaw development of the site, declined to make any of its IT experts available for interviews. CGI Group Inc, the Canadian contractor that built HealthCare.gov, is "declining to comment at this time," said spokeswoman Linda Odorisio.

Five outside technology experts interviewed by Reuters, however, say they believe flaws in system architecture, not traffic alone, contributed to the problems.

For instance, when a user tries to create an account on HealthCare.gov, which serves insurance exchanges in 36 states, it prompts the computer to load an unusually large amount of files and software, overwhelming the browser, experts said.

If they are right, then just bringing more servers online, as officials say they are doing, will not fix the site.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/05/us-usa-healthcare-technology-analysis-idUSBRE99407T20131005

[Plays In Traffic]

26. It is a shame. About 99% of their revenue comes from the gov't and

studies show that contracting work out to "private" companies can cost significantly more.

[elehhhhna]

27. OWNED by CARLYLE GROUP. Wake up everybody.

Bush fam and friends etc. It's all googleable. Public info.

[kelliekat44]

2. And besides they are RW Tea Party supporters. Not the employees but upper mgmt. nt

[winter is coming]

3. Bwah! I wondered if it was the boozers.

[VanillaRhapsody]

4. I keep telling people its a VERY complex project...and all these pieces have to communicate with

each other. This is what is causing the glitches...they are working round the clock to track them down one by one and fix them. Programmers live for this kind of stuff....they love debugging! Don't worry...it will calm down in due time as each of these platforms are trained to smoothly share information.

[dionysus]

12. no, we don't love debugging.. but we do it anyways.

especially if it's someone else's shit we're debugging.

[VanillaRhapsody]

16. Yeah...but.....its what makes you cut from a different cloth...

most people cannot take the frustration of it.....programmers can just get absorbed in it....ordinary people would walk away from it.

[Shivering Jemmy]

29. I love debugging

[dionysus]

30. good for you! i like developing. debugging my own apps is not as bad as trying to debug others tho..

[joshcryer]

14. Aquilent did a piss poor job.

It's very likely the front end was sold to outsourcers, bad Indian programmers. Some of the source code indicates a poor grasp of English.

[VanillaRhapsody]

17. No it wasn't....

do you seriously think it is the front-end causing the problems? And you think you can find that out by looking at the source-code?

[joshcryer]

20. Yes.

The page alone loaded dozens of .js files when it should've loaded just one uber file. Each file load was effectively a request. There were more than 50 of them if I recall correctly. That alone made each request behave as 50 unique requests.

If the frontend was that bad one has to wonder how bad the backend was.

[VanillaRhapsody]

21. Where did you come up with this "50" number?

So you are saying that you couldn't even access the page?

[joshcryer]

22. They were loading 11 CSS files and 62 .js files.

The static page would load (static is good) but what would happen is the .js files and the .css files would hang. If your javascript is trying to do a command within another .js file that isn't loaded after the static page loads, the instructions are just going to stall.

Here's a good article that explains it: http://wekeroad.com/2013/10/07/yes-bad-javascript-will-shut-your-site-down

[VanillaRhapsody]

24. Funny that has been up for a long time...it wasn't until volume and all the pieces of the back end

to all the various systems that it accesses...that it crashed anyone. See what I mean.

[IronLionZion]

25. That's pretty standard for gov sites

check out the application sites for social security and medicare and you will find lots of css and js files to download.

[FarCenter]

5. About CGI

Founded in 1976, CGI Group Inc. is the fifth largest independent information technology and business process services firm in the world. Approximately 69,000 professionals serve thousands of global clients from offices and delivery centers across the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific, leveraging a comprehensive portfolio of services including high-end business and IT consulting, systems integration, application development and maintenance, infrastructure management as well as a wide range of proprietary solutions. With annualized revenue in excess of C$10 billion and an order backlog exceeding C$18 billion, CGI shares are listed on the TSX (GIB.A) and the NYSE (GIB). Website: www.cgi.com.

http://www.cgi.com/en/CGI-posts-revenue-growth-Q3-F2013

CGI posts 141% revenue growth in Q3-F2013

HEAD OFFICE
1350 René-Lévesque Boulevard West
15th floor
Montreal, Quebec
H3G 1T4
Canada
Tel: [phone]

[Nuclear Unicorn]

6. So Obama hired people to people to sabotage his eponymous legislative initiative?

Is this OP trying to make the President look like a vacuous moron?

[Zorra]

18. lol. Fer petesakes, everything is not always about Obama! I suspect he had little, if

anything, to do with hiring whoever sabotaged his eponymous legislative initiative.

However, I suggest, with all due respect, that the Prez needs to stop listening to his greedy Third Way asshole advisers who know about absolutely nothing except making profit when making policy and appointments.

The Prez probably knows about as much about web design as I do. I suspect he trusted some of his Third Way advisers, maybe even Third Way HHS Secretary Sebelius, to make all of these technical related decisions, and they burned him. Having the wrong people around you, and delegating to these wrong people, is a recipe for trouble.

A few weasels in the henhouse can kill a whole lot of chickens.

[ProSense]

7. How Does ACA’s First Week Compare to Medicare Part D’s?

How Does ACA’s First Week Compare to Medicare Part D’s?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023818383

In Massachusetts
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023818383#post11

[Live and Learn]

8. Private companies and yet the media keeps blaming the government.

Some corporations make a majority of their money ripping off the government by underbidding and charging more to fix their own incompetence.

Sure, privatization is a great idea!

[FarCenter]

10. The government doesn't develop much software -- pay scales aren't enough to hire competent staff

The GS-whatever pay levels aren't high enough for the government to compete with private industry for competent engineers and computer scientists. So for most complex projects, the government contracts it out to private industry, who can hire them.

[Live and Learn]

15. Sure we do. I work for a governmental agency in IT.

Our pay isn't as high but it isn't bad and our programmers are quite able. But, we still are forced to outsource and pay premium prices for rushed and inadequate IT projects due to politics. When they run out of available funds, they leave and we are left to fix the mess.

[Zorra]

31. Really? Well...then obviously either these highly paid private company staff either suck

at their jobs, or they deliberately sabotaged the works.

A herd of chimps might have gotten lucky and done a better job building the ACA system.

[FarCenter]

32. There's a long history of failed big government IT projects involving too many contractors

http://reporting.sunlightfoundation.com/2013/aca-contractors/

Serco - 114,307,266.00
CGI Federal - 93,700,000.00
Quality Software Services Inc (United Health Group) - 68,339,812.00
Maximus Federal Services Inc. - 43,163,074.00
Vangent (General Dynamics) - 28,237,831.00
McKinsey & Company - 13,767,707.00
Deloitte Consulting - 12,921,093.80
Porter Novelli Public Strategies - 11,670,603.00
Computing Solutions - 7,802,076.24
David-James LLC - 7,283,208.00
Information Systems Consulting Group Inc. - 6,270,789.18
Unicom Logistics - 6,270,789.00
Sentel Corp - 5,487,434.00
International Business Machines - 4,999,999.00
Computer Sciences Corp. - 4,024,384.42

A lovely collection of Beltway Bandits. Total contract expense comes to $459,246,292.76.

Half a billion bucks for this turkey. Note that the four biggest are companies no one has heard of. They are undoubtedly well connected specialists in government contracting.

[Zorra]

19. +100,000,000,000

[FarCenter]

9. QSSI

Founded in 1997, Quality Software Services, Inc. (QSSI) is an established CMMI® Level 3 organization with a proven track record delivering a broad range of solutions with particular expertise in Security & Privacy, Software Engineering, and Health IT. Bringing together more than 400 of the most talented personnel in the industry, QSSI collaborates with both the public sector and private sector to maximize performance and create sustainable value for our customers.

QSSI was established on a set of guiding principles that include ethics, teamwork, and innovation. We establish long-term relationships based on mutual trust, respect, perseverance, and continuous communication with our customers. We expect our associates, at every level, to conduct themselves with honesty and integrity.

The QSSI management team represents several decades of IT experience serving both public and private clients.

http://www.qssinc.com/leadership.html

Appears to be closely held company chaired by Indians.

[joshcryer]

11. Aquilent is behind the IT side / source code.

http://www.aquilent.com/news-events/newly-designed-healthcaregov-built-with-support-from-aquilent-goes-live/

Not sure why the article says that they can't figure this out.

The Healthcare.gov github makes references to Aquilent: https://github.com/CMSgov/healthcare.gov

[kestrel91316]

23. I still think the RW tech companies involved deliberately sabotaged it.

[xfundy]

28. 1: Government should stop farming out to "for profit" (or for prophet) industries.

2: If it can be shown that any programmers intentionally put roadblocks in the way of Americans seeking government information/programs, they should be prosecuted as criminals.