Emails show officials alarmed by healthcare.gov months before debut

WASHINGTON — As work on healthcare.gov — the federal online portal to sign up for new health insurance plans — backed up during the summer, employees of the agency responsible for it started to raise alarms.

In emails, they listed problems that included “seriously substandard staffing,” shoddy work and a lack of coordination between contractors.

But a top federal official in charge of the troubled project made it clear that delaying the Oct. 1 rollout was not an option. To drive the point home, he sent his deputies a link to a video of a congressional hearing where he had pledged the website would be ready.

“I made this promise on behalf of all of us,” wrote Henry Chao, deputy chief information officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “And I have no doubt together we will drive the outcomes that flow from this promise.”

Emails released Friday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee provide a snapshot of the cascading problems and growing anxiety inside the agency less than three months before healthcare.gov went live.

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The main gateway for people in 36 states to sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act faltered on the day it debuted and has remained balky ever since. Fewer than 27,000 people signed up for insurance on the site through Wednesday, far below the government’s projections.

“Administration officials looked us in the eye and told us everything was ‘on track,’ but when we pull back the curtain now, the mess is disturbing,” said committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.). He said the revelations cast doubt on President Obama’s promise to have healthcare.gov mostly repaired by Nov. 30.

The committee has set a hearing for Tuesday on whether healthcare.gov securely stores the personal information that consumers must provide to apply for health insurance.

In a statement, the agency said the emails revealed “one small piece of ongoing discussions” about the website development and some discussed elements that were not included in the website when it launched. “Management concerns about meeting timelines are expected for any project of this size and scope,” the statement said. Not all the problem areas were considered high priority, the emails said.

Most of the emails concern the work of CGI Federal Inc., the contractor hired by the agency to handle a large share of the work. The company, which has been awarded $2.4 billion for numerous federal contracts over the years, was selected over three others: IBM, QSSI and Computer Services Corp., according to the agency. The original CGI work order, for $93 million, wasn’t signed until Sept. 30, 2011, a year and a half after the passage of the law.

The contract said the work was supposed to be far enough along for a “readiness review” in the first quarter of 2013. But in July, it wasn’t close to ready.

One agency official wrote on July 8 that one piece of CGI’s work was “way off track and getting worse.” Only 10 programmers were working on it, he said, and just one was skilled enough to handle complex problems. Another part, which was supposed to collect data from the state-based insurance exchanges, was “weeks behind schedule with most of the CGI test cases failing.”

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“I think we need to consider which items in our build will not be done if we don’t get substantially greater staffing levels,” wrote Jeffrey Grant of the agency’s center for consumer information and insurance oversight.

Eventually, the agency decided to pull back on some features.

Mark Calem, a CGI vice president, replied that the company was adding staff to complete the work, which he said had become more challenging because of unfinished requirements and late changes.

When one agency official wrote that CGI was asking for another $38 million, Chao responded with irritation, mentioning missed deadlines and poor-quality work. He told his staff to get tough with the company. “I just need to feel more confident that they are not going to crash the plane on takeoff, regardless of price,” he wrote.

CGI has been paid $112 million to date on a revised contract total of $196 million.

The next day, July 17, Chao and agency administrator Marilyn Tavenner appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and said there was still a lot to do but the website would be ready. Three days later, on a Saturday morning, Chao sent the C-Span link to that testimony to dozens of employees with the contractors and the agency. First on the list was Cheryl Campbell, a CGI senior vice president.

“I wanted to share this with you so you can see and hear that both Marilyn and I under oath stated that we are going to make Oct. 1,” Chao wrote, thanking them for their “support and vigilance” in making good on the promise.

The agency declined to make Chao and Grant available for interviews.

In a statement, a CGI spokeswoman said “evolving requirements and shifting priorities” added to the problems before the launch. The company declined to address the emails in detail. “Instead of looking backwards, CGI is eyes forward,” said Linda Odorisio, CGI vice president of communications.

In memos, the agency wrote that deadlines were slipping and trouble was looming. “Short testing windows may impact quality if day 1 functionality is being developed all the way up to 7/31 and 8/15,” one memo says. “Cascading slippages may occur.”

In hearings after the botched launch, contractors said they ran out of time and the system never got enough testing before it went live. But Campbell also said she thought the system was ready — and that it was not CGI’s call to delay the rollout.

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joseph.tanfani@latimes.com