contractors

See the following -

Health Exchange Website Failures Were Both Predicted And Predictable

Katherine McIntire Peters | Nextgov | October 10, 2013

Who knew it could be so difficult to build an effective, user-friendly website capable of efficiently serving up complex information for millions of users? Quite a few people, actually. And that’s why the Obama administration’s bungling of the most public aspect of its signature policy initiative is so baffling. [...] Read More »

500,000 Contractors Can Access NSA Data Hoards

Natasha Lennard | Salon | June 11, 2013

Firms like Booz Allen have army of employees, but only Snowden spoke up Read More »

A Modern-Day Stasi State

Tim Shorrock | The Nation | June 11, 2013

Thanks to whistleblower Edward Snowden, we now know that an army of private contractors can monitor anyone’s phone calls and e-mails. Read More »

All Eyes On Jeff Zients, Healthcare.gov's ER Surgeon

Anthony Brino | Government Health IT | October 23, 2013

To lead a sort of tech worker surge and software code purge for Healthcare.gov, the Obama Administration has brought in a turnaround guy, Jeffrey Zients. Read More »

Assessing The Exchanges

Yuval Levin | National Review Online | October 17, 2013

Over the last few days, I have spoken in some detail about the state of the federal Obamacare exchanges with several officials of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (the HHS agency that is running the exchanges), and with a number of reasonably well placed insurance company officials in Washington... Read More »

Battle Heats Up Over HealthCare.gov Paper Trail

Joseph Marks | Nextgov | December 13, 2013

A battle over the paper trail documenting the troubled building of the Obama administration’s online health insurance marketplace heated up on Friday as contractors declined to withhold some documents from congressional overseers and the lead investigating committee’s ranking Democrat accused his Republican counterpart of unfair dealing. Read More »

Cloud devs: We Could Have Saved Buggy HealthCare.gov

Christina Farr | VentureBeat | October 14, 2013

Millions of Americans flooded the new health insurance marketplaces when they opened for business earlier this month. What we didn’t expect were the glitches, bugs, error messages, and a website that looks like it’s from 10 years ago. Almost two weeks later, people are still struggling to log in to the Obama administration’s online insurance marketplace, HealthCare.gov, let alone shop for insurance. Read More »

Contractors Claim Healthcare.gov Didn't Have Enough Time

Anthony Brino | Government Health IT | October 24, 2013

The main contractors for Healthcare.gov were interrogated, scruntinzed, and criticized Thursday by members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, days after the Obama Administration called in a “fix it” team amid growing public frustration with the site’s problems. Read More »

Contractors Who Built Healthcare.gov Website Blame Each Other For All The Problems

Mike Masnick | Techdirt | October 24, 2013

With all the problems associated with the Healthcare.gov rollout, a bunch of fingers (including ours) pointed at the usual list of government contracting cronies who built the thing. The deal was done under an existing contract (so no open bidding) and involved the same "usual suspects" who have been connected to a number of other large government computer systems debacles... Read More »

Defense Companies Target Health Care

Marjorie Censer | The Washington Post: Capital Business | September 4, 2011

Traditional defense contractors are increasingly muscling into the health care services field, hoping that the burgeoning area can help them weather reductions in Pentagon equipment buying. Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin and Falls Church-based General Dynamics, both of which already had health care practices in place, have ramped up their businesses in recent weeks with new acquisitions. Read More »

Defense Contractors Vastly Outnumber Troops In Afghanistan

Bob Brewin | Nextgov | May 30, 2013

For every U.S. service member serving in Afghanistan, there are 1.6 Defense contractors on the ground (and on the payroll) in supporting roles. Contractors make up 62 percent of the force there -- 108,000 versus 65,700 troops, watchdog agency reports reveal. Read More »

Err Engine Down

David Auerbach | Slate | October 8, 2013

Of all the terrible websites I’ve seen, healthcare.gov ranks somewhere in the middle. It has been difficult if not impossible to sign up, and customer service has been inadequate. [...]  So healthcare.gov’s failures are not uncommon—they’re just exceptionally high-profile. Read More »

From The Start, Signs Of Trouble At Health Portal

Robert Pear, Sharon LaFraniere and Ian Austen | New York Times | October 12, 2013

In March, Henry Chao, the chief digital architect for the Obama administration’s new online insurance marketplace, told industry executives that he was deeply worried about the Web site’s debut. “Let’s just make sure it’s not a third-world experience,” he told them. Read More »

Good Enough For Government Work? The Contractors Building Obamacare

Bill Allison | Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group | October 9, 2013

[...As] head-scratching continues about how a famously web-savvy administration could have flubbed its Internet homework so badly, an examination by the Sunlight Foundation shows the administration turned the task of building its futuristic new health care technology planning and programming over to legacy contractors with deep political pockets. Read More »

HealthCare.gov Data Center Crashes

Ken Thomas | Time | October 27, 2013

Republicans said Sunday they intend to press Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on the Obama administration’s troubled launch of healthcare.gov, the online portal to buy insurance — even as the website suffered yet another setback. Read More »