Contractor behind HealthCare.gov to testify extra testing could not have saved site

Published October 23, 2013

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This story talks about how A top executive with CGI Federal, one of the contractors paid millions to create the ObamaCare website, says “no amount of testing” could have prevented the site’s problem-plagued start.

Senior Vice President Cheryl Campbell’s remarks are part of prepared testimony she will give before a Republican-led House hearing Thursday on the insurance-marketplace site. They also appear to challenge new claims by the administration that a lack of adequate testing was part of the problem.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing is the first since the site’s disastrous Oct. 1  launch -- marked by crashes, slow response times and its inability to let customers make purchases.
Several contractors are set to testify Thursday, and will likely face tough questioning from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, though prepared testimony indicates the witnesses may try to spread the blame around -- including to government officials overseeing the project.
Prepared testimony from contractor Optum/QSSI blamed in part a "late decision" to require customers to register before browsing for insurance, which could have helped overwhelm the registration system.

In the prepared testimony, Campbell argues that with a system “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.”

“No amount of testing within reasonable time limits can adequately replicate a live environment of this nature,” she adds.

Campbell said issues with HealthCare.gov have continued to improve over the past two weeks, but additional challenges are occurring as more users get past the registration screen and buy insurance -- including “data assurance issues.”

She said such problems can be fixed through “tuning, optimization and application improvements.”
The testimony comes as the Obama administration offered new details and explanations on Wednesday. The administration said the system didn't get enough testing, especially at a high user volume. It blamed a compressed time frame for meeting the Oct. 1 deadline to open the insurance markets. Basic "alpha and user testing" are now completed, but that's supposed to happen before a launch, not after.

This website problem is not a good problem to be in.  I have heard a fair amount of negative information and I believe that the government should be more careful and precise as to what they are going to be putting out there.

I know how frustrating it is and nearly everyone else understands how hard it is when a website does not save your information or allow you to make purchases and such.  Its a terrible process to have to go back and start over.  They just need to be more careful when launching something that peoples lives depend on.