New Silicon Valley recruits part of "tech surge" to fix HealthCare.gov site. 
 
 A Google sign at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. (Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez, AP) Story Highlights Red Hat and Oracle also helping effort 
 
 A former presidential innovation fellow also on board 
 
 WASHINGTON — An engineer from technology giant Google has been recruited to help fix HealthCare.gov, the new federal insurance exchange website. 
 
 Software companies Red Hat and Oracle will also assist, according to Julie Bataille, spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which has coordinated the development of the site that has experienced numerous problems in its first month of operations. 
 
 "As part of the 'Tech Surge,' we've added key personnel from the government and private sector, including expert engineers and technology managers," Bataille wrote in a blog item posted Thursday. "These dozens of people are strengthening and reinforcing the team we have working 24/7 to address the problems around HealthCare.gov." 
 
 During a question-and-answer session at Oracle's shareholders' meeting today, CEO Larry Ellison said the database giant "thinks it is our responsibility as a technology provider in the technology industry to serve all of our customers, and the federal government is one of our customers, so we are helping them in every way we can." 
 
 "Most of us want to see our government operating efficiently and effectively, and it is incumbent upon us to help them do that," Ellison said. 
 
 Michael Dickerson, a site reliability engineer at Google, has taken leave to help rid the federal exchange of its glitches. Greg Gershman, a former Presidential Innovation Fellow and Baltimore software engineer, will help with creating better user experiences. 
 
 As a fellow, Gershman worked to make it easier for outsiders, rather than government employees, to navigate the 1,200 websites with federal government information. 
 
 Dickerson is working with QSSI, the general contractor coordinating the fixes to the site, Bataille wrote. Gershman is working with CGI Federal, the site's largest contractor, "to improve HealthCare.gov's performance, and helping the development process be more agile so HealthCare.gov can release improvements more rapidly," Bataille wrote. 
 
 White House meeting 
 
 Thursday's announcement came as a frustrated group of Senate Democrats vented their ongoing concerns about the rollout during a private meeting with White House officials, including chief of staff Denis McDonough, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Marilyn Tavenner, and Jeffrey Zients, whom President Obama tapped to fix the problems with HealthCare.gov. 
 
 "I'm extraordinarily frustrated," said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore. "I don't think there's confidence from anyone in the room. This is more a show-me moment." 
 
 Merkley said there is support from senators like himself for extending the enrollment period to make up for the glitch-riddled rollout. 
 
 "Many of us feel there has to be a sufficient window for citizens to be able to exercise their judgment in signing up," Merkley said, "Citizens need to have that window. If there is this kind of delay on the front end, I certainly am advocating that we need to extend the window on the back end." 
 
 Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, said he could also support a short-term extension for a few weeks to make up for the first three-to-four weeks of enrollment. "I don't think we need to go further than that." Begich also stressed that citizens are not being prevented from signing up. "Right now if people want to apply, they can," he said. 
 
 Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said the White House officials assured wary senators that the site would be fully operational by the Nov. 30 target. "The administration has a plan," Durbin said. "They're taking the basic architecture of this and improving it and trying to make up for some of the problems that they've had." 
 
 McDonough was tight-lipped when asked if they successfully assuaged Democrats' concerns. "I think we had a really good discussion," he said. 
 
 Merkley was more candid. "We were all confident the system was going to up and operating by Oct. 1 and now we're not confident until it's real." 
 
 Follow @KellySKennedy on Twitter. 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1h3RoDv ||||| As part of the “Tech Surge,” we’ve added key personnel from the government and private sector, including expert engineers and technology managers. These dozens of people are strengthening and reinforcing the team we have working 24/7 to address the problems around Healthcare.gov. 
 
 They come from leading technology companies such as Red Hat and Oracle; and include individuals with expertise on site reliability; stability; and scalability. 
 
 Two of these key personnel are Michael Dickerson and Greg Gershman. 
 
 Michael is a Site Reliability Engineer on leave from Google. He has expertise in diving into any layer of the tech stack, from the metal to the application code to the people that write it, in order to deliver some of the world's most reliable online services. 
 
 Michael is onsite working with QSSI, the general contractor, leveraging his experience stabilizing large, high throughput applications to improve HealthCare.gov's reliability and performance. 
 
 Greg is a developer and entrepreneur with experience running agile development teams and creating better user experiences when interacting with government. 
 
 Greg is working with CGI, focusing on optimizing the site to improve HealthCare.gov's performance, and helping the development process be more agile so HealthCare.gov can release improvements more rapidly. 
 
 Besides these two, there are dozens of software engineers, developers, designers and analysts, who are methodically working around the clock on performance and functionality of healthcare.gov. 
 
 And lastly, as the general contractor, QSSI is making sure there is a coordinated approach to the punch list, and that the experts are being used as efficiently and productively as possible. 
 
 This post is no longer accepting comments. If you want to learn more about the Affordable Care Act, please visithhs.gov/healthcare. If you have question about or need assistance with health insurance enrollment, please visithttps://www.healthcare.gov/contact-us/. ||||| The government has tapped engineers at Google, Oracle, and Red Hat, among other companies, to assist in untangling the problems with its online health insurance marketplace. 
 
 The site, a key part of President Barack Obama's healthcare reform effort, has numerous bugs that have prevented Americans from signing up for health insurance. 
 
 Michael Dickerson, a site reliability engineer on leave from Google, is among the experts recruited by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency responsible for the site. Dickerson will be working with QSSI, the contractor that has been put in charge of fixing the problems with the site by November 30th. 
 
 Dickerson will be "leveraging his experience stabilizing large, high throughput applications to improve HealthCare.gov's reliability and performance," the agency announced today. His participation does not mean his employer is involved with the effort. (Google declined to comment.) 
 
 CMS has recruited "dozens" of engineers and analysts from the private sector 
 
 CMS has recruited "dozens" of engineers and analysts from the private sector to work on Healthcare.gov as part of the "tech surge" announced by President Barack Obama. The agency also reportedly asked Verizon's enterprise division to help fix the site, and even more help is also coming from the Presidential Innovation Fellows program, which includes entrepreneurs and programmers who hack on government projects.
– The "tech surge" to fix HealthCare.gov includes some names from the industry's biggest players. Among them, per a Health department blog post, is Michael Dickerson, on leave from his job as a site reliability engineer at Google. He'll be "leveraging his experience stabilizing large, high throughput applications to improve HealthCare.gov's reliability and performance," says the post, as noted at the Verge. Software engineer Greg Gershman will also be a "key player." As a former Presidential Innovation Fellow, he focused on improving the user experience at government websites; he'll be "helping ... release improvements more rapidly." Also onboard are tech firms Oracle and Red Hat. "Most of us want to see our government operating efficiently and effectively, and it is incumbent upon us to help them do that," Oracle CEO Larry Ellison told shareholders, per USA Today.