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In response to the false allegations made by the NHIF Manager Mr. Petko Salchev in front of the Parliamentary Committee on e-Government and Information Technology, where he blamed Information Services for the failures in the National Health Insurance Fund information system and in order to disclose the truth, we herewith state the following:
We strongly oppose the latest in a row attempts to publicly discredit the company and to halt the healthcare reforms related to digitalization of the processes in the sector at all levels.
Information Services JSC maintains 8 information systems of the National Health Insurance Fund denoted in contract RD-14-253 / 23.12.2019, entitled: “Outsourced activities on managing IT services in the system of the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF)”, which was closed with the National Health Insurance Fund following an open procedure for awarding a public procurement under the Public Procurement Act.
Since the start of the provision of services under this contract, Information Services JSC has not allowed a single unauthorized access, data compromise or loss in the maintained NHIF information systems.
An important detail is that related to the state of emergency, imposed on 13.03.2020 and the anti-epidemic measures introduced, at the request of the NHIF more than 100 changes were made in the maintained information systems, without affecting the ability to work and access to them at any time.
The statement of the National Health Insurance Fund manager that Information Services JSC restricted the access to the authorized employees of the National Health Insurance Fund is definitely false. It is NHIF that gives the access to the Information Services JSC employees, involved in the project, to maintain the system and fulfill their obligations under the public procurement contract. Prior to and during the implementation of the contract, the authorized NHIF employees at all times have had full access to the infrastructure and databases, as well as all rights to manage and control the access of third parties, including employees of Information Services JSC, involved in the project.
Currently, the only two experts with full access (the so-called "super administrator") to the infrastructure and databases are two NHIF employees. Such access is not granted to other persons inside or outside the NHIF.
It should be noted that for each access to the infrastructure and the database, the system automatically creates a record (audit log), which contains information about the user, date, time, device and performed action. This information is stored by the NHIF outside the infrastructure of the maintained systems, for the purposes of subsequent inspections in case of information security incidents.
Regardless the access the National Health Insurance Fund employees have and the specialized trainings they got at the cost of the state budget, they do not want to use the functionalities of the maintained systems, but every time they demand information from the Information Services JSC team.
We would like to stress on the fact that since July 2021 on, an average of 8,000,000 applications per month have been processed in the information systems of the National Health Insurance Fund maintained by our company. Compared to the beginning of the contract, an average of 4,200,000 applications per month were processed in the same systems, i.e. the load on public service systems has increased by 95%.
Information Services has repeatedly, in writing, informed the NHIF manager that the systems are outdated and are insufficiently flexible. We have repeatedly expressed our readiness to take joint actions towards optimization of the systems and their redeveloping in accordance to the applicable international standards for information security, but so far, there is no response from the NHIF.
Information Services is a proven and reliable partner to the state administration.
The company is also a respected partner for those who’s focus is on development of electronic services in the interest of all users, which will finally, after more than 20 years of attempts, clarify and optimize the processes in the health sector related to spending significant public resources.