Administration officials announced Sunday that they had met their Saturday deadline for improving HealthCare.gov after completing a series of hardware upgrades and software fixes to the troubled Web site.
A progress report released Sunday morning by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said: “While we strive to innovate and improve our outreach and systems for reaching consumers, we believe we have met the goal of having a system that will work smoothly for the vast majority of users.”
Government and outside technical employees have worked round-the-clock for weeks to complete the fixes so the administration could keep its promise to have the site working smoothly for most people by Nov. 30.
The report served as the basis for a press briefing Sunday morning by Jeffrey Zients, the man President Obama tasked to oversee the fixes.
As a result of the improvements: the average system response time is under 1 second; the error rate is “consistently well below 1 percent”; the online system is stable — not crashing — more than 90 percent of the time; as many as 50,000 shoppers can use the site at the same time, or up to 800,000 visits a day.
At the same time, the report cautioned that more work needs to be done in the weeks and months ahead “to improve and enhance the website and continue to improve the consumer experience.” Officials have also said repeatedly that consumers might still encounter difficulties and urged them to use the call center and seek help from specially trained personnel.
The report also confirms, however, that the administration has yet to meet at least one of its key goals: reducing the average response time of the site to half a second. And government officials, who asked not to be identified in order to discuss ongoing operations, cautioned last week that they will not know if they’ve actually expanded the site’s carrying capacity to 50,000 users at once until they have that many users online in the coming days.
The Web site was supposed to let consumers shop easily for health insurance, required by the Affordable Care Act when it launched Oct. 1, but the continued technical problems of his signature domestic initiative have been a political disaster for Obama. Nov. 30 was not originally intended to be a key date for the online enrollment system, but it took on outsize political and public importance when administration officials announced five weeks ago that the “vast majority of users” would be able to sign up for insurance through the site by that day.
A combination of federal employees, outside contractors and a handful of technical and management experts have worked for five weeks to improve the Web site’s performance as the White House has come under fierce criticism from its political opponents and some consumers.
It may be hard, however, to independently assess how well the site has met the administration’s goals of working smoothly for “the vast majority of users” until later on, when it experiences a real-time surge in high volume from consumers during peak demand.
Even on Saturday, some shoppers who tried enrolling hours after a key upgrade was supposed to have been completed, said they were unable to complete the process.
“I only made it half way through the second section,” said Liz Gallops, an insurance broker in Winston-Salem, N.C., who has tried several times to see what kind of options are available for herself, husband and daughter. “I entered my dependents but the system continued to ask me who my dependents were and would only let me add new, not claim the ones I had already entered.”
On Saturday, federal health officials said they successfully installed new servers Friday night to support a “critical system database which is already allowing more users to move through that part of the system more quickly than before.” They also said the site was performing well Saturday, with low overall error rates and response times despite heavier than usual weekend traffic.
Administration officials have said for several weeks they define success as having “the vast majority of users” be able to navigate the site and sign up for insurance. While they initially did not define what that meant, White House press secretary Jay Carney said earlier this month that the administration’s aim was to have 80 percent of users be able to enroll through the site. Those working on the project have set speed and error rates as a way of measuring that goal.
Dec. 23 is the deadline to sign up for coverage effective Jan. 1. In anticipation of high volume in the next three weeks, administration officials said they have set up a system to help consumers if they can’t immediately get access to the site during times of peak demand. Shoppers the site cannot accommodate will be placed in an online queue. They can ask to be e-mailed when HealthCare.gov can handle more visitors.
Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report.
A progress report released Sunday morning by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said: “While we strive to innovate and improve our outreach and systems for reaching consumers, we believe we have met the goal of having a system that will work smoothly for the vast majority of users.”
Government and outside technical employees have worked round-the-clock for weeks to complete the fixes so the administration could keep its promise to have the site working smoothly for most people by Nov. 30.
The report served as the basis for a press briefing Sunday morning by Jeffrey Zients, the man President Obama tasked to oversee the fixes.
As a result of the improvements: the average system response time is under 1 second; the error rate is “consistently well below 1 percent”; the online system is stable — not crashing — more than 90 percent of the time; as many as 50,000 shoppers can use the site at the same time, or up to 800,000 visits a day.
At the same time, the report cautioned that more work needs to be done in the weeks and months ahead “to improve and enhance the website and continue to improve the consumer experience.” Officials have also said repeatedly that consumers might still encounter difficulties and urged them to use the call center and seek help from specially trained personnel.
The report also confirms, however, that the administration has yet to meet at least one of its key goals: reducing the average response time of the site to half a second. And government officials, who asked not to be identified in order to discuss ongoing operations, cautioned last week that they will not know if they’ve actually expanded the site’s carrying capacity to 50,000 users at once until they have that many users online in the coming days.
The Web site was supposed to let consumers shop easily for health insurance, required by the Affordable Care Act when it launched Oct. 1, but the continued technical problems of his signature domestic initiative have been a political disaster for Obama. Nov. 30 was not originally intended to be a key date for the online enrollment system, but it took on outsize political and public importance when administration officials announced five weeks ago that the “vast majority of users” would be able to sign up for insurance through the site by that day.
A combination of federal employees, outside contractors and a handful of technical and management experts have worked for five weeks to improve the Web site’s performance as the White House has come under fierce criticism from its political opponents and some consumers.
It may be hard, however, to independently assess how well the site has met the administration’s goals of working smoothly for “the vast majority of users” until later on, when it experiences a real-time surge in high volume from consumers during peak demand.
Even on Saturday, some shoppers who tried enrolling hours after a key upgrade was supposed to have been completed, said they were unable to complete the process.
“I only made it half way through the second section,” said Liz Gallops, an insurance broker in Winston-Salem, N.C., who has tried several times to see what kind of options are available for herself, husband and daughter. “I entered my dependents but the system continued to ask me who my dependents were and would only let me add new, not claim the ones I had already entered.”
On Saturday, federal health officials said they successfully installed new servers Friday night to support a “critical system database which is already allowing more users to move through that part of the system more quickly than before.” They also said the site was performing well Saturday, with low overall error rates and response times despite heavier than usual weekend traffic.
Administration officials have said for several weeks they define success as having “the vast majority of users” be able to navigate the site and sign up for insurance. While they initially did not define what that meant, White House press secretary Jay Carney said earlier this month that the administration’s aim was to have 80 percent of users be able to enroll through the site. Those working on the project have set speed and error rates as a way of measuring that goal.
Dec. 23 is the deadline to sign up for coverage effective Jan. 1. In anticipation of high volume in the next three weeks, administration officials said they have set up a system to help consumers if they can’t immediately get access to the site during times of peak demand. Shoppers the site cannot accommodate will be placed in an online queue. They can ask to be e-mailed when HealthCare.gov can handle more visitors.
Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report.