President Barack Obama‘s administration has been tangling with critics over technical issues that has plagued the HealthCare.gov website and hampered the roll-out of the Affordable Care Act. After Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius faced a House committee yesterday (Oct. 30), a spokesperson says that experts from Google, Red Hat and Oracle are working to fix the site’s issues.
Julie Bataille, Director of Communications of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, wrote a blog post for HHS.Gov that offered new details of the “tech surge” that was announced last week. The surge will add manpower to help combat the issues of the struggling system, and the experts from the tech giants will work in tandem with existing personnel.
From Bataille’s blog post:
As part of the “Tech Surge,” we’ve added key personnel from the government and private sector, including expert engineers and technology managers. These dozens of people are strengthening and reinforcing the team we have working 24/7 to address the problems around Healthcare.gov.
They come from leading technology companies such as Red Hat and Oracle; and include individuals with expertise on site reliability; stability; and scalability.
Michael Dickerson, on leave from Google, works as a Site Reliability Engineer. Bataille writes that Dickerson will be working closely with the site’s main contractor, QSSI, to address the instability of HealthCare.gov. Bataille also named Greg Gershman, a developer who will aid QSSI in optimization and improving end-user experience.
The announcement comes a day after Sebelius faced an intense grilling from the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Republican leaders, many of whom have rallied around appealing or postponing the Affordable Care Act, requested from Sebelius documents and other information regarding the HealthcCare.gov website during the recent government shutdown.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa issued a subpoena for Sebelius today, stating that the committee insists on seeing the documents.
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Photo: Reuters
