Technical Issues with the Federal Health Exchange, Who’s to Blame?

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has now acknowledged that for many of the 20 million Americans that tried to access HealthCare.gov, the experience has been “frustrating.” Almost three weeks after the site launched, people are still struggling to search for health insurance, or even login. The press has been quick to highlight the complex web of more than 45 government contractors tasked with developing and managing HealthCare.Gov – suggesting that the source of the problem is poor project management. A classic example of “too many chefs in the kitchen.”

In response to the recent flood of criticism, HHS has promised to recruit the “best and brightest” to fix issues with the federal exchange. In truth, HHS should have sought the involvement of innovative technology firms from the start. Instead, they chose to rely on the usual group of large around-the-beltway federal contractors whose idea of technical innovation is often finding creative ways to keep customers using their existing legacy applications for as long as possible.

I don’t know of a single commercial enterprise or entrepreneurial technology firm that would have rolled out such a mission-critical implementation the way that HHS did. To the contrary, it’s a well-adopted standard operating procedure to test and debug new system functionality in iterative cycles – before rolling out a product as important as HealthCare.gov. These quality control efforts almost always include focus groups for capturing user feedback and bringing potential user experience problems to light as well as system load testing. Had these efforts been sufficiently prioritized, there is an excellent chance that HealthCare.gov would not have experienced so many critical failures.

If there is one thing that I’ve learned from 20-years of guiding organizations through the process of developing focused solutions, it’s that major projects need a well-defined plan that effectively outlines the optimal scope of work, expected resource requirements, implementation strategy, performance expectations, and deployment schedule. At Patriot Labs, we refer to these as Solution Blueprints. For HealthCare.gov, an effective Solution Blueprint would have established well-defined priorities and coordinated the work efforts between contractors. In addition, it would have directly addressed the question of what is the best technology to use. Several prominent experts have questioned the technology stack used to develop HealthCare.gov. For example, the scalable and cost-effective cloud technology used by Amazon and Google are ideal for supporting huge numbers of users and traffic spikes. Though we may never have a definitive answer to who is to blame for the dismal rollout of HealthCare.gov, I think most would agree that the project could have benefited from an effective Solution Blueprint.

Learn More

Patriot Labs works with clients to develop Solution Blueprints that effectively guide them through the process of defining technology project requirements, planning infrastructure modernization strategies, deploying new systems, and the all-important budget justification. For additional insight into how IT Solution Blueprints lead to successful project implementations and reduced risk, contact Ron Garnett.