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State Blue Mountain Eagle Wednesday, August 17, 2016 A7 Insider: Culture, mismanagement doomed Cover Oregon By Nick Budnick Capital Bureau Take a week off, wade through thousands of pages of court ilings in Oregon’s long-running court battle with software giant Oracle, and you still won’t have the real story of how Cover Oregon failed and wasted more than $300 million, according to Tom Walsh, a longtime tech- nology specialist and veteran of the project. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of words have been written about Cover Or- egon in the two years since the state project to enroll Or- egonians in ObamaCare im- ploded. However, an insider’s account has never been pub- lished until now. Other top consultants and former man- agers have routinely declined to comment, often citing the pending litigation. But Walsh is ready to speak out because of contin- ued public confusion around Cover Oregon. “I think people should un- derstand why it failed,” Walsh says matter of factly, given how many people worked so hard on the ambitious project, and how much was spent. He’d also like to prevent another debacle when the state launches its next big-ticket, taxpayer-funded IT projects. “I don’t think Oregon knows that it (has) a prob- lem,” Walsh says. Hint: it has to do with man- agement. 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 Loui- sa Moore, who has worked on large technology projects with Walsh, including in Califor- nia. “He’s a true professional 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 Pamplin Media Group/Jamie Valdez 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. says. He moved into a cubicle with the state’s IT team, in a Salem ofice building. Rather than sitting among the workers, top manage- ment 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 instituting the training or changes needed to make them work, he says. Walsh came to realize the dysfunction was mirrored on the Oracle side, where workers for the state’s chief contractor were divided into iefdoms re- porting to different managers. In fact, Walsh’s Oracle coun- terparts sometimes warned him to be skeptical of the com- pany’s work in other parts of the project, he says. His job was to oversee how the project tracked inancial transactions, such as payments 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 massive quantities of data would it to- gether under the project’s de- sign, 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 en- sure his team was not held up. He credits that decision for his team’s success, as the inancial side of Cover Oregon worked ine and was completed on time. In contrast, Walsh still re- calls 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 system its staff envisioned had no capaci- ty to process mid-year changes in a family’s health policy, pre- miums or tax credits after they enrolled. Your Rural Fa mily Health Clinic Grant County HEALTH Department 528 E. Main, St. E, John Day Monday - Friday 8am - 5pm Services Provided: Karen Triplett, FNP • Primary Care • Acute Care • Women’s Health Exams • Men and Children Exams • Immunizations • Family Planning • Contraception • Pregnancy Testing & Referrals • HIV Testing & Referrals • Cacoon • WIC • High Risk Infants • Maternity Case Management Grant County Health Department does not discriminate against any person on the basis of race, color, national origin, disability, or age in admission, treatment, or participation in its programs, services and activitie s, or in employment. Appointments available Call and schedule your appointment today! TOLL FREE 888-443-9104 or 541-575-0429 Such changes — due to a birth, death, divorce or a wage-earner losing their job — are common, and on multi- ple occasions Walsh urged Or- acle 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 carri- ers it worked with — a basic problem that caused ripple ef- fects throughout the project’s workings. This, Walsh believes, was the “fatal law” of Cover Or- egon, 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 mirrors congressional testimony given by Alex Pettit, the state’s top IT manager, who was brought in to try and rescue the project in early 2014, only to realize it was impossible due to the “fundamental design error” concerning mid-year changes in a family’s policy or circum- stance. “The whole thing was go- ing to have to be rewritten ... It was truly unbelievable that it would ever be designed that way,” Pettit told congressio- nal 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 re- cords, and the system wouldn’t keep track of it.” Walsh echoes Pettit, that because the project’s program- ming was in Oracle’s hands, the technical design was argu- ably the company’s responsi- bility. Defects in state IT culture 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 stan- dard Oracle product 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?” respond- ed the analyst, and the ix was Grant County Chamber Members Advertise Here Contact the Grant County Chamber for more information 541-575-0547 Jerry Franklin GRI, ABR, SRES Broker/Owner 160 E. Main • John Day, OR 97845 Office: 541-575-2121 Home: 541-820-3721 JFranklin@easternoregonrealty.net www.easternoregonrealty.net set up later that day, Walsh re- calls. For all the criticisms of Cover Oregon, Walsh says parts of the system worked well. And the non-technical program side of things, such as the variety of plans offered and number of insurers participat- ing, was a great success. “It wasn’t that the whole thing failed,” Walsh says, add- ing that the project’s insurance design “was one of the best in the country.” But while a state consul- tant’s report on Cover Oregon highlighted mismanagement, and Pettit, the top state IT man- ager, has instituted reforms, Walsh says he’s not sure either addresses some of the biggest management weaknesses he’s seen in Oregon 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 communi- cation lowing up and down the command chain. On Cov- er 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 experi- ence, they lacked a record of success in large IT project de- velopment. 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 re- place non-performing manag- ers with better ones. “They hire people they know,” Walsh says, “And then, when things don’t go well, they hire more people they know.” A TTENTION G RANT C OUNTY V ETERANS : Did you know Grant County Veterans Services Officer is available to assist YOU in applying for all VA benefits you may be entitled to? See your Grant County Veteran Services Officer today for more information, located at Grant County Court House. Open: Mon, Wed, & Fri 10 am - 4 pm, by appointment. Call 541-575-1631 Grant County Chamber Monthly Newsletter Hello Grant County, August is almost over, and school will be starting soon. Boy, the summer went by fast! Labor Day is just around the corner. The 107th Grant County Fair just ended and what a great fair it was! Thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make it a success! Are you tired of hearing about the 2017 Solar Eclipse yet? Well, we think it is going to be a VERY big deal for Grant County, so you will be hearing about it for the next year! The countdown begins August 21st. We want to be prepared when the time comes. If you are interested in working on one of the following committees please call the chamber and let us know. The committees are: Entertainment, Transportation, Vendors, Lodging, Viewing Areas, and Services (water, trash, etc.). We would like to welcome our newest member to the Chamber – John Day Trailer Park and Laundromat. The Chamber is doing well and we are excited about our upcoming annual Installation Dinner. We haven’t confirmed the date or all of the details, but it will be in September and we hope you will all attend. Last but not least, I want to thank our amazing volunteers. They do a fabulous job and the Chamber is a much better place because of them! They are: Dorman Gregory, Sherry Feiger, Larry Christensen, Nicki Cohoe, Elaine Husted, Mary Ellen Brooks, Lola Johnson, Chuck Wilson, and Pam Durr. Our next Chamber Board meeting will be Thursday, August 18th at 11:00 AM at the Chamber office followed by a lunch gathering for our membership at 12:00 at the Outpost. We hope you can make it. John Day City Manager Nick Green will be our guest speaker. JOHN DAY AUTO NAPA 721 W. Main St. John Day, OR 541-575-1850 Grant County Chamber Members Advertise Here Contact the Grant County Chamber for more information 541-575-0547 Enjoy the rest of the summer! Tammy Bremner Chamber Manager 04327