On March 4, 2015, The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on the troubled rollout of Healthcare.gov. The GAO concluded that weak oversight by the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) may have contributed to the technology problems associated with the Healthcare.gov project. In one example of poor oversight, the GAO noted that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) uses Healthcare.gov for public exchange enrollment in certain states. But the HHS Chief Information Officer insufficiently oversaw the project and did not play a direct role in managing HHS Information Technology (IT).
The GAO report also found that OMB failed to enforce its own IT standards. OMB was tasked with closely monitoring the Healthcare.gov project, yet the report found that “involvement in overseeing the development efforts of HealthCare.gov and its supporting systems was limited prior to the initial launch in October 2013.” OMB’s oversight of the project did not include a thorough review, despite the fact that Healthcare.gov was flagged as a high-risk project and OMB had notice of technical problems seven months before the October 2013 website launch.
The full text of the GAO Report can be found here.