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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.'"
Fire them all with prejudice.
The only part of the article that stood out as unusual to me was "AMS-built computer systems sent Philadelphia school district paychecks to dead people". Now that is a seriously innovative program that can find and send a check to someone on the other side.
Just the technology for web sites that can scale to serve dozens of concurrent users.
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What bid . . .?
Revealed: Michelle Obama's Princeton classmate is top executive at firm that that built disastrous Obamacare website after being awarded no-bid $93m contract
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2477403/Michelle-Os-Princeton-classmate-exec-company-built-Obamacare-website.html
. . . it just shows you where the real value of a good education is . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
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?
The reason government contracts are broken is because they exist.
For some reason, in the US it is more politically acceptable to pay a private firm $200K per worker for a government contract than it is to pay $150K per worker to hire people to do the job. And this is not a partisan thing, since the biggest area where this kind of silliness happens is obscenely high military budget, and that gets reapproved without much serious question. It creates a lot of opportunity for graft among anybody controlling a government purchase, costing even more public money unnecessarily.
By contrast, the UK government has an IT department that is in charge of all government websites. If they need more people to do the job, they hire them. If they need fewer, they lay people off. And overall, they get better results for less money because that one department can coordinate efforts in a way the multiple US contractors simply can't do.
I am officially gone from
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.
If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try again.
That's what the contractor's loop iteration code looked like.
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
Thank you Dave Raggett
In Montreal, where CGI HQ is based, the organization is referred by many in Quebecois slang "Criss de Gang d'Incompetent" (CGI) == Fucking group of incompetents.
This was taught to me by a former CGI employee.
They are well know (like other three letter oursourcing groups like IBM and CSC) to underbid to get a contract and under deliver. I've heard former high level CGI executives (who after they left) admit this and chuckle about it out loud.
The truth it so many other large firms do the same thing.
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.
Thank you Dave Raggett
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.
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.
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).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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?
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?
Thank you Dave Raggett