For Information - Accenture To Fix And Manage The US Government’s Key Health Website - Healthcare.gov.

This appeared a day or so ago:

Administration taps Accenture to take over HealthCare.gov

By Stephanie Condon CBS News January 10, 2014, 12: 29 PM 

The Obama administration is granting the consulting firm Accenture a contract worth between $90 million and $100 million for maintenance of the federal Obamacare website HealthCare.gov, two sources familiar with the contract told CBS News.

Accenture will replace the original lead contractor responsible for the site, CGI, whose contract is expiring. The contract leaves the consulting firm responsible for the continued construction and maintenance of the site, with a special emphasis on “back-end” portions of the site that handle the transfer of data from users to insurers.

Accenture will also work with QSSI, the contractor that was appointed in late October to lead efforts to fix HealthCare.gov after its disastrous launch.

The details of the contracted are still being finalized, but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is expected to announce the deal soon.

Accenture already maintains California’s state-run Obamacare website, and it assisted in the development of Kentucky's state site. California and Kentucky also used CGI technology and expertise to build their sites.

HealthCare.gov serves as the Obamacare portal for 36 states, but when it launched in October, its technical problems dramatically hindered enrollment. Since then, the problems have largely been fixed, and more than 2.1 million people have signed up for private plans via HealthCare.gov and other Obamacare sites.

Full article is here:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/administration-taps-accenture-to-take-over-healthcaregov/

Healtcare.gov is a web site where people enrol for health insurance that is designed to be cheaper and allow more people to be insured - especially those excluded from insurance because of pre-existing illnesses. The site implementation and the underlying health reform program has been a topic of partisan contention and furious debate in the US.

The site debut about two months ago was a debacle with the site not working, providing bad data and generally being a huge mess. It has been improved to some extent but is still not functioning perfectly by any means.

All we can do is wish Accenture luck!

David.