PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - Oregon hopes it can avoid another Cover Oregon fiasco by carefully monitoring about 80 other information-technology projects with a total estimated price tag of nearly $1.4 billion.
A statewide inventory, ordered by Gov. John Kitzhaber in the wake of an investigation of the state’s botched health-insurance exchange website, lists all IT projects over $1 million in projected costs. The inventory was released to The Associated Press by the Department of Administrative Services.
Part of a wider effort to reform state IT work, the inventory was put together by Oregon chief information officer Alex Pettit, who last week additionally took on the same title, on an interim basis, with Cover Oregon.
The inventory significantly expands the number of major IT projects to be closely monitored - from just under a dozen “major IT projects,” including the exchange project.
Officials say the state will in coming months evaluate where the 80 projects stand in their development and will work with the agencies on a new method of tracking and oversight tied to the funding of the projects.
The monitoring can pinpoint which projects, if any, are running into problems and will create a central point of accountability for the IT projects, said Matt Shelby, spokesman for the Department of Administrative Services.
An independent investigation of Cover Oregon found the exchange was plagued by a lack of accountability and by fragmented authority. Oversight of that project was divided up among various boards, committees, agencies, and teams - and decision-making was shared by Cover Oregon, the Oregon Health Authority and the Department of Human Services, agencies that were often at odds, meaning no one was really responsible for or in charge of the project.
As Cover Oregon floundered, state workers had little authority to step in, Shelby said. While state analysts made sure quality-assurance reports were produced and distributed, they could not turn the project off or send it back to the drawing board despite the numerous red flags, he said.
The investigation, released by Atlanta-based First Data Government Solutions in March, recommended more authority be given to the state chief information officer for oversight of IT projects and the establishment of a single point of decision-making for such projects.
Cover Oregon’s portal failed to launch in October and six months later, the state is the only one in the nation where the general public still can’t enroll online in health coverage in one sitting. Residents and Cover Oregon staff are using a hybrid manual-online enrollment process, despite $134 million in federal funding spent on building the exchange.
Following the release of the investigation report last month, Kitzhaber called for broader IT reforms.
“It is critical that we learn from this project and adopt whatever changes are necessary to improve project management and safeguard public investments,” the governor said in a statement.
The new tracking and oversight process will solve the accountability problem by tying project funding to incremental approvals of completed work, Shelby said, meaning the projected cost will not be approved all at once. Rather, an agency will need to come back periodically to show progress and obtain the next portion of funding.
“There will be a central process for approving, stopping, or rerouting projects,” Shelby said. “The goal is to provide a vehicle for identifying IT projects that need more work before they go to the next phase.”
Current projects will also be subject to the new incremental approvals - regardless of past authorizations. The state has hired Connecticut-based IT research and advisory firm Gartner Inc. to help identify best practices in the monitoring and funding process and to help agencies determine where they are in the life cycle of the project.
But a Republican state lawmaker who’s running for governor said the inventory is “late in the game and unnecessary,” because the Department of Administrative Services already has the authority to do IT project oversight.
“The failure of Cover Oregon is one in a long list of failed IT programs. DAS had a responsibility to oversee these projects, and they failed to do it,” state Rep. Dennis Richardson said. “This is more political theater rather than a real solution.”
In addition to Cover Oregon, the highest-cost projects in the inventory include: a $230 million project to modernize the statewide emergency radio network; a $120 million Oregon Military Department project to add text, video and photo capabilities to the 911 system; a $109 million Department of Justice project to modernize the child-support system; and a $90 million project to overhaul the DMV’s 1970s-era computer systems.
The inventory and monitoring join other ongoing state IT reforms, including a chief information officer position with more oversight authority over state IT projects and a new law that requires technology projects costing more than $5 million to have an outside quality-assurance contractor evaluate the plans.
The state is also refining a new governance framework for managing IT projects across agencies to help them reduce duplicate investments by sharing IT products and services and improving coordination and oversight.
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