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Dominic Lepore - IT Project Management

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Home ProjectFAIL Affordable Care Act Website, Maryland Edition

April 7, 2014 By PM Dom

Affordable Care Act Website, Maryland Edition

I recently documented the failings of the Oregon ACA website. Now its Maryland’s turn. Maryland has commissioned an audit so we should get a good inside look. But the audit is not scheduled to be done until the summertime. We do know a lot about this failure already. According to documents from the IV&V contractor obtained by the Washington Post, these problems existed early in the project:

  • Insufficient State staffing
  • Insufficient time for software development
  • Lack of a detailed project plan
  • Inefficient communications
  • Lack of sufficient time for regression and system testing
  • Lack of a comprehensive QA and testing plan

The prime contractor, Noridian, has been terminated. A substantial amount of their fees has been withheld by the state.

There was also significant issues between Noridian and one of their subcontractors, EngagePoint. Interestingly, I read where Noridian hired EngagePoint since it had no real ability to develop the exchange. I don’t know why Maryland awarded a contract to a company that had to quickly hire a subcontractor to do the work.

Most recently, Maryland decided to scrap the $125M effort and adopt the same technology used in Connecticut. Adopting the CT exchange technology is expected to cost an additional $50M. It makes me wonder why some states didn’t just do join together in the first place. Or staged a phased implementation so mistakes could be corrected before a nationwide launch.

Filed Under: ProjectFAIL

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