More Consultants Promised to Aid in Difficult Healthcare.gov Website
October 31, 2013
The article Obama Administration Promises ‘Tech Surge’ to Fix Ailing Healthcare.gov website on The Verge discusses President Obama’s proposed path to adjusting the new healthcare initiative. Overshadowed by the government shutdown, the difficulties users have encountered on the site have included confusion, long waits, inability to create an account and even, as the article mentions, wrong information being sent to insurance providers. The article explains that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will be launching a “tech surge” which comprises bringing in more consultants and the “aggressive” monitoring of problem areas. Some of this has already gone into effect, as the article states,
“Apparently, the website has already seen some improvements. For a short time, as HHS explains, the department created a “virtual waiting room” for those attempting to create an account — but this only caused more confusion. That ad hoc solution is gone now, but we still haven’t received a firm number of how many people have successfully created accounts and received insurance. Instead, the HHS has only said that the site has had 19 million unique visits.”
This embarrassment for the Obama administration is partially due to the complexity of the “technical hurdles” faced, especially that contractors most likely needed Federal Information Security Management Act certifications. Recently President Obama addressed the nation to admit to the issues with the site, and to reassure Americans that those issue are being worked on. The promised “tech surge” can’t hurt, but it waits to be seen whether adding more consultants will solve the myriad problems with the website.
Chelsea Kerwin, October 31, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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