Washington, October 30 2013: An Indian enterprise-fuelled US-based technology provider has been given the responsibility of getting the Obama administration's healthcare programme back on line after its website posed a lot of problems for citizens required to enroll.
The website www.healthcare.gov is an online insurance exchange for 36 states of the US where Americans can enroll for compulsory health insurance under the new federal law, the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly called the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or as the opposition Republican party dubbed it, "Obamacare".
Due to programming glitches, very few people could create accounts, or apply for insurance, in the first few days of the website’s operation. The website managed by the U.S. Centres for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Now the Columbia, Maryland(US)- based Quality Software Services Inc, or QSSI, QSSI) a CMMI Level 3 organization. has been named general contractor to oversee repairs to the web portal and get it up to speed by November end. Founded in 1997 by Tony Singh, QSSI is largely fuelled by Indian-origin talent including its President and CEO, Bikram Bakshi, an IIT Delhi alumnus, who has an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and an MS in Computer Science from Texas A&M University. He is aan inventor or co-inventor of eleven US patents and author of several IEEE conference publications. The CTO is chief technology officer is Kovilvenni Ramaswamy, a BE from an REC in India with over 20 years of software engineering. QSSI was acquired by Minnetonka-based UnitedHealth’s Optum business unit in 2012. The company actually , designed the website’s data services hub, as a sub contractor and has now been vested with larger responsibility.
“They’ve done a good job already,” Julie Bataille, Communications Director for the Centres for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which oversees Healthcare.gov was quoted as saying, “They are familiar with the project and have the skills and expertise to address these problems.”
Initially President Obama attributed the breakdown of the healthcare site to popularity. “The website got overwhelmed by the volume,” he said on October 4. Later it became apparent that the basic architecture of the site was flawed and inadequately tested prior to launch. “Nobody is madder than me about the fact that the website isn’t working,” Obama was reported as saying on October 21 by Time magazine.
The irony is not lost here in India: Wrote the Times of India on October 28:"US President Barack Obama has consistently demonised outsourcing to India. Now, however, he has a different problem to deal with... Republicans are already jumping down the president's throat on Obamacare, because they disagree with its principles. Their disagreement is so intense that they even shut down government spending and threatened a US debt default.. However, a solution for problems of Obamacare could come from a source that Obama's reviled all along: by outsourcing software issues to India...He can protect his legacy by offshoring the entire online job to skilled Indian companies, which offer quality services at a price that won't break the bank. And he ought to eat crow while he's about it too."