What Happened?
Salem, OR-based Oregon Health Authority has appointed Carolyn Lawson as chief information officer.
About the Company
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon`s northern and eastern boundaries, respectively. The area was inhabited by many indigenous tribes before the arrival of traders, explorers, and settlers who formed an autonomous government in Oregon Country in 1843. The Oregon Territory was created in 1848, and Oregon became the 33rd state on February 14, 1859.
About the Person
Carolyn Lawson stepped down as chief information officer of the Oregon Health Authority and the Department of Human Services for “personal reasons,” the agencies’ leaders wrote in a terse memo to Lawson’s staff and other senior officials. Lawson came under fire a year ago when state lawmakers accused her of misleading them about available technologies. More recently, technology experts and her own boss have laid blame for the problem with her decision to have the state act as the project’s systems integrator, a sort of general contractor to oversee the complex integration of disparate parts of multiple vendors. Lawson was hired in 2011 to oversee technology projects for the two state agencies that administer health and human services programs. The state had just approved creating a health insurance exchange, and it was tacked onto a separate project to modernize the internal computer systems for both agencies. Lawson was responsible for delivering the technology on a very tight schedule. The $48 million federal grant funding Lawson’s work ran out unexpectedly in May. The development work was hastily handed over to staff at Cover Oregon, a semi-autonomous state agency created to run the exchange business using Lawson’s technology. Shortly after taking over, a Cover Oregon official wrote a scathing report highlighting serious problems with its functionality. Before coming to Oregon, Lawson held IT positions in several California state agencies. Oregon paid her just under $179,000.
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