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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 12, 2016)
8A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, AUGUST 12, 2016 Cover Oregon: Weakness in management led to unnecessary delays Continued from Page 1A Both sides in the ongo- ing litigation have struggled to explain the massive scope of the Cover Oregon failure, which came despite a lengthy head start and extra funding from the federal government. The reality, according to Walsh? Compared to other large projects, “It should have been easy.” One of the roving breed of professional consultants who bounce from state to state for months or years at a time, Walsh is typically the top-dog “systems analyst” who either leads or troubleshoots large IT project design or is paid to watchdog those who do, says Shari Benkiel, a longtime IT consultant who has worked with Walsh on seven large projects in ive states. “He is usually the irst per- son I call” to ill that role, she says. “I call him ‘The Bor- derline Genius,’” she adds, because of his insights into complex health care technol- ogy projects. With a Ph.D. in econom- ics, and a resume that includes IT expertise as well as a stint as head of Medicaid for the state of Illinois, Walsh brings a level of technical, inancial and management expertise that normally requires three or four hires to match, says Lou- isa Moore, who has worked on large technology projects with Walsh, including in Cal- ifornia. “He’s a true profes- sional and he really knows his stuff.” ‘That’s not going to work’ Walsh heard about it from a friend. The Cover Oregon project would be a one-stop health coverage shopping site that would allow consumers to compare health plans, qual- ify for lucrative tax credits and enroll in a single sitting. The federal government was supplying Oregon with tens of millions in extra funding to serve as a model for other states. Excited by the vision, Walsh applied and went to work on it in April 2012 as a consultant. The warning signs were immediately apparent, Walsh says. He moved into a cubi- cle with the state’s IT team in a Salem ofice building. Rather than sitting among the workers, top management was rarely to be seen — which Walsh characterizes as “very abnormal … There were a lot of disputes about how we should be doing things that nobody stepped in and took charge of.” The project’s top managers employed a mishmash of proj- ect development techniques, adopting multiple methods over time, but never institut- ing the training or changes needed to make them work, he says. Walsh came to realize the dysfunction was mirrored on the Oracle side, where work- ers for the state’s chief con- tractor were divided into ief- doms reporting to different managers. In fact, Walsh’s Oracle counterparts some- times warned him to be skep- tical of the company’s work in other parts of the project, he says. His job was to oversee how the project tracked inan- cial transactions, such as pay- ments to insurance agents for helping consumers. But he and his Oracle counterparts were repeatedly rebuffed in 2012 when they sought information from other parts of Oracle that they con- sidered crucial to the project’s success, such as how mas- sive quantities of data would it together under the project’s design, he says. The data design would be ready in two weeks, they heard over and over. Walsh began to have his doubts. “You tell yourself, ‘They can’t be that bad … I’m sure they’ve got something.’ ” After a while, Walsh pur- sued a separate data design for his portion of the project to ensure his team was not held up. He credits that deci- sion for his team’s success, that way,” Pettit told congres- sional investigators, adding that when he complained to Oracle about its design, the response was, “Well, it wasn’t in the speciication.” Pettit’s retort: “Well, it didn’t need to be in the spec- iication. You knew you had to keep track of changes to records, and the system wouldn’t keep track of it.” Walsh echoes Pettit, that because the project’s pro- gramming was in Oracle’s hands, the technical design was arguably the company’s responsibility. Defects in state IT culture Jamie Valdez/Pamplin Media Group Tom Walsh, a veteran IT troubleshooter who worked on the inside of the Cover Oregon project, says the full story of the debacle has never been told. as the inancial side of Cover Oregon worked ine and was completed on time. In contrast, Walsh still recalls the shock his team felt in July 2013 upon seeing the design for how enrollment would work for the project. A colleague’s muttered reac- tion: “Well, that’s not going to work.” Fatal law in design? Walsh says it appeared that Oracle managers felt they didn’t need to do a ground-up design, that they were just modifying existing off-the- shelf Oracle software. Walsh was surprised to hear from Oracle in fall 2012 that the health insurance sys- tem its staff envisioned had no capacity to process midyear changes in a family’s health policy, premiums or tax cred- its after they enrolled. Such changes — due to a birth, death, divorce or a wage-earner losing their job — are common, and on mul- tiple occasions Walsh urged Oracle to accommodate changes in its design. The response? We’ll get to it later. Not until September 2013, the month before the project was supposed to go live, did Walsh and his team learn that Oracle’s design for the health insurance project still did not allow changes to a family’s policy or circumstances. This meant Cover Oregon would not be able to share data effec- tively with the insurance car- riers it worked with — a basic problem that caused ripple effects throughout the proj- ect’s workings. This, Walsh believes, was the “fatal law” of Cover Ore- gon, and why the exchange had to be scrapped. Fixing the problem would require major changes at great cost. And the project’s budget was already largely expended by the time the problem became clear. Walsh’s diagnosis mir- rors congressional testimony given by Alex Pettit, the state’s top IT manager, who was brought in to try and res- cue the project in early 2014, only to realize it was impos- sible due to the “fundamen- tal design error” concerning midyear changes in a family’s policy or circumstance. “The whole thing was going to have to be rewritten … It was truly unbelievable that it would ever be designed But Walsh says the state bears responsibility for other problems, including delays and wasteful spending. For instance, the state spent months and millions of dollars trying to perfect a new type of interface to shift data between two components of the project. Walsh urged the use of a standard Oracle prod- uct instead. In the end, when an Oracle analyst conirmed to Cover Oregon managers that Walsh’s idea would work, a top oficial asked how long it would take to set up the solution. “What time is it?” responded the analyst, and the ix was set up later that day, Walsh recalls. For all the criticisms of Cover Oregon, Walsh says parts of the system worked well. And the nontechnical program side of things, such as the variety of plans offered and number of insurers partic- ipating, was a great success. “It wasn’t that the whole thing failed,” Walsh says, adding that the project’s insurance design “was one of the best in the country.” But while a state consul- tant’s report on Cover Ore- gon highlighted mismanage- ment, and Pettit, the top state IT manager, has instituted reforms, Walsh says he’s not sure either addresses some of the biggest management weaknesses he’s seen in Ore- gon when it comes to large IT projects. Walsh has watched several Oregon projects play out, and his account of a larger prob- lem of management culture echoes other consultants who spoke privately with the Port- land Tribune. Oregon features a top- down management style, in contrast with other states, says Walsh, who has studied man- agement. Successful projects, however, feature communica- tion lowing up and down the command chain. On Cover Oregon, this management style led to an early focus on schedule rather than design. Later, management obsessed on the website’s appearance while ignoring the details of how it would work. Another problem that seems endemic to Oregon IT projects is cronyism, rather than hiring the best-qualiied staff, Walsh says. While Oregon oficials like to complain the salaries allowed by the state aren’t large enough to afford top IT management talent, Walsh says the real problem is Ore- gon doesn’t use top consult- ing talent the way it should. And while the people running Cover Oregon had IT expe- rience, they lacked a record of success in large IT project development. Because of the cronyism, accountability suffered. “The ‘in’ people seemed to have more leeway,” Walsh says. The weakness in man- agement led to unnecessary delays and ineficiencies, and likely contributed to the state’s failure to challenge Oracle on key issues, Walsh says. And when problems came up, the state did not replace nonper- forming managers with bet- ter ones. “They hire people they know,” Walsh says. “And then, when things don’t go well, they hire more people they know.” The Capital Bureau is a collaboration between EO Media Group and Pamplin Media Group. T AKE A STAND FOR COMMUNITY SAFETY These days, I think all of us dread picking up a newspaper or turning on a news broadcast to find ou t that there’s been another mass killing and an ever-increasing number of victims of gun violence. The horror, sadness, fear and feeling of helplessness are human reactions to what see ms incomprehensible. It doesn’t matter if you are for gun-rights or for stricter gun controls, as human beings we share these feelings of horror, sadness, fear and helplessness. Would a gun resolution make any difference, do letters to the editor and posts on social media help address this problem? I don’t know, but I do know that I must do something…we must do somethin g to put a stop to this madness. Area residents have signed on to support the following letter, which I have written and am paying fo r, as a private citizen. Please contact your elected leaders to support their work for improved gun safety. Here is the letter: and tors Ron Wyden Kate Brown, Sena nne za Su s ive Honourable Gov. tat nal Represen sio res ng Co , , ter DeFazio and Jeff Merkley rl Blumenauer, Pe Ea , en ald W eg Gr Bonamici, Kurt Schrader, communities in joins with other ia tor . As of ty The Ci around our country from mass killings s t se ac los st mu the e g W nin . mour ger enough prayers are no lon of e ns se r ou g din But thoughts and is ero this madness that an to put an end to nse of pride in being se r ou , ity un mm co g of rin e ns bo se igh r ne ou safety, se from Astorians and tho of e hts Th rig n. the ca t or eri pp Am ter su have signed this let own communities who ng and for their nti hu r fo s rm ea fir n ow to als individu ntly: you to work dilige protection but urge sault weapons; magazines and as y cit pa in a -ca gh hi n • To ba no-fly list to obta for someone on a al eg ill it e ak m • To weapon; checks; and rsal background l • To approve unive services a nationa alt for mental he h g in nd fu e ak m • To priority. es ke our communiti your efforts to ma r fo d an all u ren yo ild k ch an Th d raise our fe place to live an sa a te sta r ou d an grandchildren. Sincerely, ayor Arline LaMear, M ia tor As City of Adriana Guerrero Alan C. Batchelder Alana Garner Aletha Westerberg Alison Coffinbarger Amy Lewis Andrew E. Cier Andrew Fick Andrew Marshall Andrew Wiegardt Angela Cosby Ann Lederer Ann Robben Dott Anne Gant Anne Maltby Anne MacGregor Anne Odom Arthur Limbird B. Norman Barbara Balseiro Barbara Knick Barbara Sanderson Becky Thormahlen Ben Palenske Beth Fitch Betsy Ayres Bob Bohnke Bob L. Girrard Bob Westerberg Bonnie Lively Brenda Brown Brenda Harper Brenda Penner Brian R. Hannula Brian Wentworth Bruce Holmes Bruce M. Watts C. Anne Teaford C. R. DeDolph Calvin Cahail Cameron Brister Carl Dominey Carol Newman Carol Smith Carole Barnhart Carole Elder Carolyn Brooks Carolyn Eady Carolyn Wells Carrie Palenske Catherine A. Nist Catherine Murray Cecilia Balcomb Celia Davis Celia L. Tippit Charles Bollong Charles J. Schweigert Charlotte Bruhn Cheryl Johnson Christine Trexel Christopher Farrar Chuck Albright Clark Trexel Cliff LaMear Connie Moore Cynthia Price Dale Clark Dan Sutherland Darcie Hays Darcy Wiegardt Darren Orange Dave Pollard Dave Zunkel David Ambrose David Brooks David Drury David J. Oser David McAfee Debra Twombly Diane J. Donnellan Diane Millican Dianne Widdup Dolores Skillstad Don West Donald Morden Donna Carson Doug Balcomb Doug Thompson Drew Herzig Dulcye Taylor Edith H. Miller Elaine Buer Elizabeth Banholzer Rev. Elizabeth “Kit” Ketcham Emily J. Nelson Ernie Barrows Farrah King Frank Logan Frank Spence Gail Henrikson Gary R. Webb Glenn Roger Dorband George Heintz Gerald R. Olson Gloria P. Jones Hal Campbell Hannelore Morgan Harlan Thompson Helen Bohnke Holly McHone Irmin Roberts Iris Sullivan Daire JD Wells Jackie Branch Jackie Wecker Jacqueline M. Nichols James Alegria Jan E. Roberts Jan Mitchell Jane Audrey Jane Hill Janet A. 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