Software developer Red Hat Inc. (NYSE: RHT) is among the tech companies pitching in to fix the problems that have plagued the government’s new health insurance website, HealthCare.gov, officials said Thursday.
Google and Oracle engineers also are part of the so-called “tech surge” that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is employing to get HealthCare.gov running properly, Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in a blogpost.
“As part of the ‘Tech Surge,’ we’ve added key personnel from the government and private sector, including expert engineers and technology managers,” Bataille wrote. “These dozens of people are strengthening and reinforcing the team we have working 24/7 to address the problems around HealthCare.gov.”
It was unclear how many people from Raleigh-based Red Hat would be involved, but Bataille said all of the engineers would work with the contractors who designed the site to upgrade its reliability, stability and scalability.
HealthCare.gov was supposed to start enrolling people on Oct. 1 for the insurance required under the Affordable Care Act, but it has repeatedly crashed and produced incomplete applications, frustrating the Obama administration as much as people trying to get on the site and becoming a target of Republican critics.
Programmers have said the complex site was designed under extremely tight deadlines that left limited time for testing.
