11/12/2013
Mass. calls in Oracle to help cure overbudget Obamacare website
By Chris Cassidy and Matt Stout6 hours ago
The state's $69 million Obamacare website is "overbudget," has missed deadlines and now is bringing in eleventh-hour engineering assistance from Oracle, in the face of looming cutoff dates that could force some to go without health insurance, the Herald has learned.
The fix comes after the Herald reported Saturday a mere 1 percent of applicants facing canceled health plans had managed to enroll in Obamacare plans through the state's website, with just weeks before many plans expire Dec. 31.
Gov. Deval Patrick yesterday brushed off any concerns about the system.
"No, none at all," said Patrick when asked if he had any worries about the low sign-up rate. "It was slow when we first got it launched here in the Commonwealth seven years ago. It's a long time, many months, before the deadline. We'll get it done."
But thousands of Bay Staters currently enrolled in the Massachusetts Health Connector must reapply and be approved - and some are facing open-enrollment periods that end this month.
A Herald review shows the cost to develop the new tech- nology has ballooned 10.6 percent in just 16 months - from $62.4 million to $69 million, with much of the money being billed to federal grants.
The 1,184-page contract between the state and CGI Group puts project costs at $62.4 million, but more than a dozen approved and pending change orders obtained by the Herald have spiked the cost by $3.5 million, while IT subcontractors also have driven up the price tag.
"Right now, I heard that the exchange is overbudget, but not on the details," Health and Human Services Secretary John Polanowicz told the Herald yesterday.
CGI is now paying to bring in extra support from Oracle Corp., a hardware and database manufacturer, to work on the system, Polanowicz said.
"Internally, we're already working with CGI," Polanowicz said. "They've asked us for additional resources to ensure that the MA-21 system is transitioned appropriately.
"They've brought in some extra resources from Oracle," he said.
State officials were adamant that the project costs won't escalate further.
"We are not going to go above the $69 million," said Jason Lefferts, spokesman for the Massachusetts Health Connector.
Lefferts insisted yesterday the increased costs represent added features, not overruns on the initial design.
"The change orders are not cost overruns and reflect additional work added to the contract. We are not paying money for the same work, but are paying for additional work," Lefferts said. "The vast percentage of funding for this project is being provided by the federal government."
State officials refused yesterday to provide any further details about how the website is funded. The state has received approximately $180 million in federal grants to comply with Obamacare.
Meanwhile, state officials also admitted they've missed key deadlines on the project, including a component that verifies financial eligibility, but they maintained the delays haven't contributed to the maddening bugs that have crashed the system in the past few weeks.
"There are some things that have fallen behind," said Scott Devonshire, the Connector's chief information officer. "We were trying to avoid putting out functionality that didn't work."
CGI and Oracle both declined to comment yesterday. Both companies have roles in the troubled national Obamacare website, HealthCare.gov: CGI is the website developer, and Oracle provided a software component regarding ID verification.
