Obama administration warned about health care website

Washington (CNN) -- The Obama administration was given stark warnings just one month before that the federal healthcare site was not ready to go live, according to a confidential report obtained by CNN.

The caution, from the main contractor CGI, warned of a number of open risks and issues for the HealthCare.gov web site even as company executives were testifying publicly that the project had achieved key milestones.

On Capitol Hill on Monday, Medicaid Chief Marilyn Tavenner, whose job it was to oversee the October 1 rollout of the website, said she did not foresee its problems.

"No, we had tested the website and we were comfortable with its performance," she said. "Now, like I said, we knew all along there would be as with any new website, some individual glitches we would have to work out. But, the volume issue and the creation of account issues was not anticipated and obviously took us by surprise. And did not show up in testing."

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But the CGI document, which describes "top risks currently open" and "outstanding issues currently being mitigated" says the testing timeframes are "not adequate to complete full functional, system, and integration testing activities" and lists the impact of the problems as "significant."

Another element is listed as " not enough time in schedule to conduct adequate performance testing" and given the highest priority.

Related: Healthcare.gov: What works and what doesn't?

CGI had no comment other than to confirm authenticity of the report that also gave "the highest priority" and warns "we don't have access to monitoring tools" and "hub services are intermittently unavailable" -- short for the "site's not working sometimes."

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/29/politics/obamacare-warning/index.html