Boston Globe takes aim at Massachusetts IT
The Boston Globe takes aim at Massachusetts state government IT in an editorial posted Saturday.
The paper argues the state needs to break apart large technology projects into small pieces and spread them out among multiple vendors to avoid public technology failures.
“If the debacle surrounding the rollout of the Health Connector website teaches state government anything, it should be that software projects are getting too large — and too expensive — to be entrusted to one firm alone,” the paper wrote. “Bill Oates, the Commonwealth’s new chief information officer, who formerly held the same position for the City of Boston, must convince the state bureaucracy that the real key to success is to think small.”
The Massachusetts Health Connector was built as a result of then-Gov. Mitt Romney’s state health care reform. The site served as the model for the federal government’s healthcare.gov but struggled itself to adjust to the standards the federal government put in place with the Affordable Care Act.
That was, in part, because of the struggles of CGI, the state’s vendor for the project. The state has since announced it will move on from CGI to Optum.
