The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is giving Accenture a one year contract to continue repairs on HealthCare.gov following a shaky initial launch late last year. The federal exchange has been the source of Republican and consumer ire since it rolled out and promptly started showing nothing but error screens to users hoping to meet deadlines for insurance coverage. The overall deployment timeline for a website as complex as HealthCare.gov was considerably shorter than other federal projects and court challenges led by states hoping to repeal the law cut down time for build out and testing even more. Now that the website works for a majority of users, Accenture will be stepping in to take it over the ten yard line.
Following a transition period on the current program, Accenture will provide services to support the Federally-Facilitated Marketplace (FFM) to prepare for open enrollment in October 2014 including 24/7 support of the Marketplace application, eligibility and enrollment functions, generation and transmission of enrollment forms, and features related to special enrollment periods, among other services. Accenture also will develop new capabilities required for future phases of program implementation.
The CMS contract will last for one year and be valued at $45 million to cover the initial phase but could go up. The contract will be based on mutually agreed upon work plans, which will help define the final value of the one-year contract.
Accenture has successfully built and continues to maintain large-scale, highly interactive public-facing websites and portals for the federal government, including the Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Education.
