{mosads}But Issa suggested the administration might be running afoul of federal procurement procedures in the scramble to get the website fixed.
“Despite the President’s assertion that ‘we’re well into a “tech surge’ ” neither the White House nor HHS is providing additional details about which private sector companies have been engaged or whether they are being engaged through the appropriate procurement processes,” Issa wrote in the letters, which were also sent to Oracle and Expedia.
“The Committee seeks your company’s cooperation in an effort to obtain important information about the problems plaguing HealthCare.gov and efforts to address them that the Administration has so far refused to divulge.”
An individual familiar with the website issues told The Hill that Verizon’s Enterprise Solutions division is helping HHS address the unexpected surge in traffic that hit the website. The telecommunications firm was one of numerous companies initially hired to handle traffic to the healthcare website and has been brought in to help boost capacity to the website.
Democrats accused Issa of rushing his investigation, questioning a part of his letter requiring a response from companies within three days.
“Although it makes sense to speak with these companies about their role in improving the ACA website, the Chairman’s demand that they turn over internal documents within 72 hours seems on its face to be an effort to throw sand in the gears of this entire effort,” said a Democratic Committee staffer.
The administration has so far declined to publicly detail which firms and individuals have been brought in to help the repair effort, aside from announcing Tuesday that former acting Office of Management and Budget Director Jeff Zients would provide short-term advice to the HHS team.
The White House has also said that the administration would deploy a handful of presidential innovation fellows to examine and fix the problems, although has not provided their names.
This post was updated at 12:27 p.m.