The vision was flawed. The IT strategy was a disaster. MNsure needs to change — and I should know. I'm a MNsure board member. What's the definition of madness? We've spent $140 million. We're about to spend $89 million more. To show for it, we have a mediocre MNsure website and an IT mess at the Department of Human Services (DHS). Plowing millions more down the same path? Let's talk about that.
Sen. Tony Lourey, DFL-Kerrick, has a bill that would do away with the MNsure board and make MNsure a state agency. I would argue that's where the problem began.
The vision for MNsure was the Legislature's — and it was grand.
MNsure would not only serve the function of an exchange under the federal Affordable Care Act — determining eligibility for premium subsidies and helping Minnesotans shop for health plans — but it would also replace and integrate the antiquated DHS computer system in one grand new IT marvel.
Importantly, it would be paid for almost entirely with federal money — and that was the beauty of it. Such was the Legislature's vision.
The strategy for implementing that vision came when MNsure was operating as a state agency. Before MNsure legislation was even passed, the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Commerce, in 2011, contracted with four firms to customize and combine four different off-the-shelf software platforms to replace the DHS computer system and build the new exchange. It was to be a symphony of information technology, a wonder to behold.
But the IT tasks were more difficult than agency staff members envisioned. Progress was slow. The technology outline on which MNsure was to be based came months too late from the federal government, just as the strategy of four different vendors building disconnected pieces of software was dissolving predictably into a full-blown IT disaster.
It gets worse. In February 2013, still acting entirely as a state agency, MNsure ousted its general contractor, deciding with hubris that its staff could better lead the project. MNsure the state agency had set the fateful course to manage one of the largest and most complex IT projects in state history — by itself.