Lead Contractor On Health-Care Web Site Led By Execs From Troubled IT Company

thomst writes "The Washington Post's Jerry Markon and Alice Crites report that 'The lead contractor on the dysfunctional Web site for the Affordable Care Act is filled with executives from a company that mishandled at least 20 other government IT projects, including a flawed effort to automate retirement benefits for millions of federal workers, documents and interviews show. CGI Federal, the main Web site developer, entered the U.S. government market a decade ago when its parent company purchased American Management Systems, a Fairfax County contractor that was coming off a series of troubled projects. CGI moved into AMS's custom-made building off Interstate 66, changed the sign outside and kept the core of employees, who now populate the upper ranks of CGI Federal.'"

Comments

CGI Federal and CMS are literally useless

[Anonymous Coward]

Fire them all with prejudice.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Of course they are

[sugar and acid]

The "experience" looked for in a company looking to win a government contract like this is, well a track record in winning government contracts.

They know the tricks and hoops to go through to get to the end and win the contract. They probably also have good contacts that help them win it in the first place.

Ability to actually manage the contract and deliver the result. Pretty much irrelevant.

Basically good bullsh*tters, bad managers.

fair comparison

[globaljustin]

he's not deflecting you are...

the whole 'Obamacare rollout has been awful' is such a misreported story...making a comparison to a rollout of a similar program from the other party helps frame the issue properly

Re:fair comparison

[meglon]

Not only that, but when things went south on Part D, the democrats did everything they could to help fix the problems. With the ACA, the republicans have acted like complete assholes for the entire time, doing everything they can to undermine it, then undermine anything they can and tie it to the ACA.

best point to be made here

[globaljustin]

Fire them all with prejudice.

yes do this.

I've read through some comments below & really that's all there is to say about this.

Debating 'gov't VS private sector' can be interesting or it can be excruciating. In this case we can surely fault the government for being dumb enough to pay these companies...so there's that...then of course the companies's work was shit...

Bottom line in thsi case is the same w/ most 'gov't VS private sector' debates....private sector can be more 'cutting edge' than government but government has the accountability of the people.

For the 'rollout' of a long-planned government that has State/Federal differences & the insurance industry there's no reason to spend 100's of Millions on routine IT work.

The US just paid these companies to hire IT workers to make the site to specifications. The gov't could have hired IT workers directly.

The problem with the debate is that so many 'government contracts' are basically ***government subsidies of industreis*** with tax dollars for the businesses in a particular political area, not on market forces.

If government contracts weren't doled out as political favors the data wouldn't be so noisy.

Re:best point to be made here

[St.Creed]

Shorter: Dilbert's company got the contract, due to their extensive experience in the industry.

Do it in-house, instead. Career professionals are better than contractors.

You obviously never worked with government employees. The combination of protected work + low pay does not tend to attract the best and brightest, in my experience.

Re:best point to be made here

[dbIII]

So? Other governments don't have protected work and low pay and they are still governments. You don't have to settle for shit. Actually get off your arses and vote and you may get a government that pays more attention to people who are not just in it to play political games.

Re:best point to be made here

[sumdumass]

Actually, it is government that is incompetent. From the start there were problems with the law that Reid and Pelosi ended up making comments about not knowing or understanding what was in the law to the most recent comments made by President Obama in that nobody knew the law would cause people to lose their coverage when he signed it. Then you have decisions made not because they were technically sound, but because they were politically motivated by politically appointed personnel known to be loyal to party agendas. The company that got the job owed its fortune largely to politics as well. Even if we discount the ties Michelle Obama has with senior officials of CGI, the bidding process was expedited which locked out most of the competition to only 16 companies of which only 4 placed bids on. I'm not aware of any details of the other 3 bids or why CGI was selected over them.

This entire process has been ran as if the senior management held honorary positions with no intent on actually managing but rather just having a name associated with it. Sadly, Obama himself seems to have conducted quite a bit of his presidency in the same ways with everything that he knows nothing about until he reads it in the news paper.

Also, I don't think this is a fair comparison of government verses private sector. I can't find anything that CGI has been part of that wasn't government initiated or funded. It's like saying that if Microsoft was to spin off it's Microsoft Office department but still manage it, that it is a completely separate company competing with Microsoft. The only thing that seems to be private sector about this company is the fact that they work by contract with several different governments instead of being employed directly by one. But when you look at other areas where the private sector actually works in the private sector, you clearly see how the private sector does it better and cheaper then the government.

Road construction and maintenance is one of those areas. I used to work for one of the county engineers offices in my area (one political office that is actually expected to get results). The road crews were great at minor repairs and some projects where larger projects like bridge replacements were usually bid out at a lesser amount then it would take the road crew to do half of. But this also shows that it is important to have the abilities to do some stuff in house also, just not all one or the other. Filling pot holes being bid out would probably cause citizens to go postal. Digging up water or sewer lines and repaving after the repairs is another problem that cannot wait for a bidding process where in house shines the best. I seriously doubt there will ever be a private verses public sector argument that is always 100% correct unless it discounts stuff like that and even then, it is showing how both are needed to be efficient and competent.

Re:best point to be made here

[GodfatherofSoul]

This is a stupid talking point. The ACA isn't what's banning health insurers. These individual policies have a REGULAR 40-67% turnover rate. EVERY YEAR BEFORE THE ACA WAS ENACTED. All of a sudden, people are trying to claim that it's the ACA's fault that a regular trend is taking it's normal course. There's a quote in context from around 2010 where Obama talks about this in more detail, but of course a bumpersticker slogan works better than reality.

And, these policies were absolute BS in teh first place. They were like the $20 healthcare policies offered by colleges that covered jack squat.

Re:But their bid was lower!

[strength_of_10_men]

And what was the graduating class of 1985's size? In 2012, it was about 1200. So let's say in 1985 there were 1000. Given that this is Princeton, it's likely that SOME of them are doing well in their careers, maybe even so far as to be execs at some companies.

Unless there's even a hint of something illegal (or even unethical) going on here, I'm more likely to chalk it up to pure coincidence. What are they supposed to do - disallow any company with executives that happened to have attended school with the Obamas from doing govt work? If that's the case, I doubt there will be many qualified companies left

No, this just looks like guilt by association.

Re:But their bid was lower!

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even bother to read it? Did you miss the point that it was Bush administration that approved them for no bid contracts? Did your knee hit your chin? Do you need a dentist?

IT'S BEEN OVER FIVE FUCKING YEARS. STOP BLAMING BUSH.

Face it, Obama's a failure. Continuing to blame Bush for every damn thing is pathetic.

It's not just pathetic

[Sycraft-fu]

It is counterproductive. If everything is the fault of some guy in the past, long gone from politics, then that lets the current guys get away with whatever they like. We can only hope to improve the decisions politicians make by holding them accountable. If they have an automatic out of "Oh the bad guys in the past did it!" then nothing gets better.

Graft all the way down

[SuperKendall]

I don't get why people have not yet figured out that most large federal projects are rife with graft - the only difference is you don't hold the crappy $800 hammer that results, unlike everyone who gets to see the substandard work that results from politically connected projects with something like a public facing website.

This is EXACTLY why federal spending must be reduced, because it is for the large part wasted to a far greater degree than state or city level funding (though there is graft there to, it just cannot be at the level federal graft is).

Re:But their bid was lower!

[artor3]

This is such an inane line of reasoning.

The things that are Bush's fault 5 years ago are still Bush's fault today. They'll still be Bush's fault in another five years, and in fifty years, and in fifty thousand years. The blame doesn't shift to the new guy just 'cause he's now occupying the same address.

If the Bush administration approved this company for no-bid contracts, how the flying fuck can you try to pin that on Michelle Obama? You think Obama's first act of office should have been to throw out every single piece of paperwork filed from 2001 to 2009, and start it all over from scratch?

what are these "incentives" you speak of?

[globaljustin]

Government employees have no incentive to spend public funds wisely

ok you got me...i'm curious...what do you mean by 'incentive'?

can you give a counter-example? something where a person **would** have the proper incentive as you define it to do *excelent* work on a project like this? how would that look?

you don't need to write a book, just give me an idea of what you mean

also, if you feel like it, can you explain how government contracts will **always** be doled out as political favors? Do you mean 'practically' always or are you saying its inherent? If so do you see any system anywhere that would do it by proper market forces?