The Obama administration didn’t properly test or correct errors with healthcare.gov before the website’s disastrous launch in fall 2013, a government watchdog said.
The Government Accountability Office released a report Wednesday that outlined ongoing the problems that contributed to the difficult launch of the site, which residents in 37 states use to purchase insurance through Obamacare. The report said the administration improved the site since the botched launch but still has several problems to correct.
In fall 2013, healthcare.gov launched with great fanfare by the administration. But the site continually crashed and stalled, leaving customers unable to browse or buy healthcare plans.
The report tied problems to three areas: inadequate planning for the capacity needed to serve millions of customers, software coding errors that weren’t fixed and a lack of functionality.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also failed to properly test the system before it launched.
The report acknowledged that CMS has improved the website. However, more oversight of the agency’s IT efforts are needed.
Other agencies such as the Office of Management and Budget and Department of Health and Human Services need a larger role in ensuring that CMS continues to provide a functional site, the report said. These agencies were hardly involved at all in planning and oversight before the launch.
CMS also needs to keep IT contractors in the loop on the technical requirements for healthcare.gov prior to develop them, the report added.
The administration agreed with the report’s recommendations.
