We previously discussed the gross negligence exhibited in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare) rollout and how there appeared little accountability for such failures even when they cost hundreds of millions.(For a column, click here). Now it turns out that, after costing the country a fortune due to this shoddy work, the IRS has reportedly awarded the company yet another contract to do work on . . . you guessed it, Obamacare.
So it was only in January 2014 that Administration insisted that it had dumped the company despite CGI Federal’s connections to fundraising for the Obama campaign and personal connection to the First Lady (Toni Townes-Whitley, a senior vice president at CGI Federal, was a Princeton classmate and friend of First Lady Michelle Obama). The IRS contract is worth $4.46 million and will expire in Aug. 15, 2015. At the time, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told Congress that the CGI-designed website a “debacle” and “I am as frustrated and angry as anyone with the flawed launch of HealthCare.gov.” As I stated earlier, I still am mystified how Sebelius was not fired. However, if CGI is any example, she can now hope to be made Vice President or better.
Now the Administration has awarded an IT contract for its new Obamacare tax program. Wouldn’t the greatest failure in a federal contract weighed slightly against the awarding of the contract?
That seemed to be an issue with Vermont and Massachusetts which dumped the company last year.
However, CGI’s 2014 annual report reportedly omits its role in the prior disastrous rollout.
BDS may have gone airborne!!!
slohrss29
I doubt very much that a ‘couple of guys’ wrote a site over a weekend, put it into play with the entire country and all the nonsense of the private sector and it worked better. Your input is nothing different than the stuff that has been leveled at Obama and the Democrats for the past six years.
It very well may be that there is cronyism, incompetence, and political payoffs associated with the rollout of the ACA and its website. However, that is America on both sides, Obama is no more or less the cause of this than Bush was, say with trillions of our dollars through Haliburton etc.
I have paid particular attention to the before and during of this health care insurance issue. It was the private insurance sector that has been making the money and making more through the ACA. The real problem here isn’t Obama and the ACA but the parasitical private insurance industry. We need to have medicare and medicaid administer a basic insurance system first. Then all those that want the extras whatever they may be can approach the private sector. As it is now the American public is victim of one of the most insidious monopolies ever devised. Even Nixon was about to introduce a single payer system and both sides were for it. We have a choice, continue being fleeced by private insurance or combine our resources and pay as a nation. It is as simple as that.
“mistakes” now “snafus” I award the Baghdad Bob 2015 Award to the pilot.
The ACA was political as much as medical, maybe more so since it was passed on a party line vote. To whine about “mistakes” which are by any standard fiascos or fundamental incompetence being hammered @ is laughable. Spinning won’t fly here, but the cultists keep trying.
“However, in the world of cheap political shots, any and all mistakes are up for grabs.”
Sure there were attempts to turn criticism of the implementation of ACA into political hay. And it is true that this was a big complex project.
But the people who put the ACA web site together made basic errors that deserve serious criticism. You might have a reasonable debate over who is more to blame the contractors that did not do basic tasting or the government employees who let them by with such a lame approach.
But there is no question the the roll out was deeply flawed in ways that could have and should have been anticipated.
JT is one of the few w/ the balls to mention the Michelle dirty hands on this.
Ari, You are trying to speak righteously to a well known BDS patient.
I’m shocked, JUST SHOCKED, a Chicago politicians Administration would be infected w/ corruption.
BDS appears to have a direct reaction to mentions of Obama’s most incompetent and lawless Administration in modern history. Lupus has flare ups. BDS must be autoimmune w/ any negative mention of the cult leader causing the flares.
Our broken procurement system, where government overpays and contractors under deliver, with zero consequences, Exhibit X.
When are we going to learn and demand change?
Randyjet…you need to understand that this practice is institutionalized and it doesn’t matter what party is in power or what particular firm is involved. It occurs frequently and only makes news when salacious. The answer is not to assign blame to who did it (fruitless retrospection) , but to reform the process to prevent the activity. Good luck with that.
Citing 48 CFR…there is absolutely no way anyone could write a sane J&A document, or analyze bids pre-award, any contract with CGI asserting best benefit with CGI’s track record of causing federal losses. You’d need concrete evidence that they had improved their skill sets, which if not available would justify awarding to the next lowest bidder who could pass that analysis.
Aridog, Thanks for your comments since they are informed and I learn from them, plus it is good to know that there are some conscientious folks in government too.. I wonder how Haliburton kept on getting contracts for sub standard work and killing GIs.
As someone who has worked extensively with Federal Acquisition Regulations (48 CFR)…color me NOT surprised. Patronage has a lot to do with this matter, and from the link and info provided I can’t tell if it was a sole source no-bid contract or not.
Some contracting officials will break the rules of 48 CFR when they can, if it serves some ulterior motive…or political interest. It seems to occur more frequently at the higher levels of government.
I was lucky to have worked with a Chief of Contracting Division who was squeaky clean, and we met daily near the end of the day to discuss up coming acquisitions. No no-bid deals got past either of us, when we had control, if there wasn’t a J&A (Justification and Analysis) document presented that would pass muster with regular taxpayers (meaning common sense was necessary) if highlighted to the public.
In every J&A document I prepared I had to show how the action proposed was beneficial to the government and essentially amounted to a savings of taxpayer funds. If I could not do that with a straight face, I just said so and a regular RFP/RFQ was issued for open bids.
I wonder if the IRS adhered to the 48 CFR rules? It isn’t all that difficult, and when ignored, it IS intentional.
Isaac, I don’t know if you remember the release of the site, but a couple of guys wrote the same solution in a weekend and it worked better. There are tools to do this these days and there is no excuse for having a product delivered to the taxpayers in this condition.
Randyjet–of course it is no worse than Halliburton, but one doesn’t justify the other. Obamacare and Halliburton (or whatever pseudo they are using this month) are a gift to the American people that just keeps on giving.
slohrss To compare the two takes unbridled partisanship in the extreme. There are a number of DEAD GIs thanks to Haliburton and Bush and Cheney.. My wife DOES have health insurance now, even with the snafu, and the program is SAVING lives, not taking them. So even with the screw ups, my wife’s health is FAR better now than before. THAT kind of thing has to be said too.
randyjet – how fast we get to moral relativity. Stick to the subject. You know the next step is to make the owner an ambassador somewhere, Court of St. James?
This sort of thing is easy political hay. However, the world of websites, especially ones that are designed to accommodate the intricacies and complications of the ACA are not easy things to develop. The industry is also in its infancy. Toyota lost money of the Prius for many years before turning a profit. The tech industry and all that was and is related to it was a dog’s breakfast for decades and continues to turn out faulty stuff. People have been complaining about Microsoft for decades. For the most part the way to success is not to abandon the process but to continue on through and solve the problems. The technological marvel of a world we live in today is the result of these very failed attempts at the next big thing.
However, in the world of cheap political shots, any and all mistakes are up for grabs. This can be seen, here, and here, and here, and here, during the past six years coming from the Republican party and their vacuous followers. When you got nothing, yell and point the finger at your opponent.
That is no worse than Halliburton who electrocuted GIs with faulty wiring in the showers in Iraq. Last I heard, they never lost a contract, and the damage claims were tossed out by the courts their survivors filed against the company.
Obviously the IRS never read Von Clausewitz – “Never reinforce defeat.”
$4.46 million IRS contract to vendor who does shoddy work and are friends of Obamas? What could possibly go wrong? Maybe something like this powerful Dem.
N.Y. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver accused of $4 million bribery and kickback scheme, Dems continue to support him.
Silver, who has been one of the most powerful lawmakers in Albany for more than two decades, surrendered to FBI authorities Thursday morning.
A five-count federal complaint accuses him of accepting millions from firms seeking his influence in Albany.
The cancer continues to grow. Nothing new here.
Should it come as no surprise that the Obama Administration is sometimes on the take?
The more graft handed out in the form of political contributions and patronage the better your chance of getting preference over others in contracts, ambassadorships, or other positions within the government. Merit is not the main asset to be brought to the table in many of these cases.