Why did CGI get the contract to build the Obama care website?

[Cancel 2016.2]

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2...-only-cares-about-politics-obamacare-website/

CGI is not a creative free spirit from Jersey City with an impressive mastery of Twitter, but a Canadian corporate behemoth. Indeed, CGI is so Canadian their name is French: Conseillers en Gestion et Informatique [Consultants in Management and Information processing]. Their most famous government project was for the Canadian Firearms Registry. The registry was estimated to cost in total $119 million, which would be offset by $117 million in fees. That’s a net cost of $2 million. Instead, by 2004 the CBC (Canada’s PBS) was reporting costs of some $2 billion — or a thousand times more expensive. . . .


But it proved impossible to “improve” CFIS (the Canadian Firearms Information System). So CGI was hired to create an entirely new CFIS II, which would operate alongside CFIS I until the old system could be scrapped. CFIS II was supposed to go operational on January 9, 2003, but the January date got postponed to June, and 2003 to 2004, and $81 million was thrown at it before a new Conservative government scrapped the fiasco in 2007. Last year, the government of Ontario canceled another CGI registry that never saw the light of day — just for one disease, diabetes, and costing a mere $46 million.​

Quite a track record they have going there... I wonder why the Obama admin would hire a CANADIAN company with a horrid track record?

Why would even the most managerially incompetent administration in history hire a firm with that sort of track record to handle its signature project? Well, call me cynical, but the Daily Caller has noted that the senior vice president of the company was a classmate of Michelle Obama at Princeton, and spent “Christmas with the Obamas” at the White House seven months after she got her job at CGI.

Oh... well, that just has to be a coincidence...

Why isn't the left up in arms about offshoring the jobs? Spending US tax dollars on a Canadian firm to create a website that doesn't work. One that is said to have cost about $600m to create... which is absurd in itself. All the tech firms in the US and we couldn't get the Obama admin to choose one over this Canadian failure?





​

 

[Big Money]

 

[christiefan915]

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2...-only-cares-about-politics-obamacare-website/




Quite a track record they have going there... I wonder why the Obama admin would hire a CANADIAN company with a horrid track record?



Oh... well, that just has to be a coincidence...

Why isn't the left up in arms about offshoring the jobs? Spending US tax dollars on a Canadian firm to create a website that doesn't work. One that is said to have cost about $600m to create... which is absurd in itself. All the tech firms in the US and we couldn't get the Obama admin to choose one over this Canadian failure?





[/INDENT]

And when we accused cheney of cronyism for giving Halliburton a no-bid contract during the Iraq war, cons were all over us.

Sauce for the goose, etc.

 

[Cancel 2016.2]

And when we accused cheney of cronyism for giving Halliburton a no-bid contract during the Iraq war, cons were all over us.

Sauce for the goose, etc.

1) Halliburton was a US firm
2) Halliburton was able to handle the job


But good to see you are a hypocrite

 

[Big Money]

 

[christiefan915]

1) Halliburton was a US firm
2) Halliburton was able to handle the job


But good to see you are a hypocrite

How does anybody know if the job's going to be "handled" successfully during the bidding process?

This isn't about CGI, it's about Michelle Obama's classmate.

 

[cawacko]

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2...-only-cares-about-politics-obamacare-website/




Quite a track record they have going there... I wonder why the Obama admin would hire a CANADIAN company with a horrid track record?



Oh... well, that just has to be a coincidence...

Why isn't the left up in arms about offshoring the jobs? Spending US tax dollars on a Canadian firm to create a website that doesn't work. One that is said to have cost about $600m to create... which is absurd in itself. All the tech firms in the US and we couldn't get the Obama admin to choose one over this Canadian failure?





[/INDENT]

I've not heard this story until now but it does seem strange that will all the technology prowess of the Silicon Valley and the U.S. in general that a Canadian based firm would win the business.

Do they have a large U.S. presence?

 

[Big Money]

Insurance exchange websites cost taxpayers $1B; contractors often paid to do same job in different states​

HealthCare.gov, the federal Obamacare website, isn't the only website with issues following the roll-out of the Affordable Care Act. There are also problems in the states that set up their own websites using taxpayer dollars.

15 states that have set up their own insurance exchanges used more than $1 billion to pay for their own Obamacare websites. That huge price tag is being paid for by the federal government -- courtesy of taxpayers -- and some of these websites have also struggled to get off the ground.

With HealthCare.gov unusable for most, administration officials have pointed to efforts in the states and called it a success. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said, "They are eager to enroll folks and that that is going smoothly."

But people in some of those states may disagree with how smoothly it's going. One thing's for sure: the federal tax dollars are pouring in. A CBS News analysis shows that the 15 states that opted to set up their own exchanges are spending more than $1.1 billion to launch and implement their own websites, often paying the same government contractors to do the same job in different states.

California has dedicated $359 million, while New York is spending $161 million. In Kentucky it's $100 million, and in Oregon the price tag is $50 million.

The president has pointed to Oregon, which has enrolled 56,000 people in Medicaid - to argue things are working. "That's 56,000 more Americans who now have health care," the president has said. "That doesn't depend on a website."

And it's a good thing, because Oregon's website doesn't work. The new Medicaid enrollments came through the mail. The state website has yet to enroll a single person.


http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57610154/states-insurance-exchange-websites-cost-taxpayers-$1b-contractors-often-paid-to-do-same-job-in-different-states/

 

[christiefan915]

Marilyn Tavenner, who heads the development of HealthCare.gov, made it through a Senate hearing Tuesday without making much news.

That's a good development for the embattled head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Tavenner was able to report that HealthCare.gov, the website for the federal government's health insurance exchange, was working better than it was a week ago, when she last testified before Congress. More than 700,000 applications for coverage have been submitted so far through HealthCare.gov and state insurance exchanges, she reported.

The federal website is processing nearly 17,000 registrants per hour with almost no hours, she said, and wait times for pages to load are down significantly. There is the occasional outage -- such as the one that shut down the site's application/enrollment system for 90 minutes on Monday -- but Tavenner repeated her promise that the site will be "fully functional by the end of November."

"The web site is, in fact, working, and more people are applying and enrolling every week," she said.

http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonv...3/11/05/healthcaregov-working-better-but.html

 

[Big Money]

"The web site is, in fact, working, and more people are applying and enrolling every week," she said.

 

[christiefan915]

17,000 an hour baby, read it and weep!

 

[Big Money]

17,000 an hour baby, read it and weep!

You claimed the Obamacare site was up during the grilling of Sebelius.
It wasn't.
Prove it's processing 17,000 an hour.
Until then, I'm ROFLMAO​

 

[Big Money]

Now, back to the subject of the thread:


Clay Johnson, a former member of President Obama's technology team, said, "What we've done is we've created systems that enable this level of waste."


Johnson blames federal rules that favor large government contractors such as CGI, who got contracts in five different states to help develop their websites.


CGI is the same company now under fire for its role as lead contractor for the federal website. Johnson said, "If CGI Federal had contracts with five different states, something tells me that they got paid five times for some of the same code."


Crawford said "it goes back to the money, and why are taxpayers are forking over more than a billion dollars on 15 different state websites that will end up looking pretty much the same."


http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57610154/states-insurance-exchange-websites-cost-taxpayers-$1b-contractors-often-paid-to-do-same-job-in-different-states/

 

[Cancel 2016.2]

How does anybody know if the job's going to be "handled" successfully during the bidding process?

This isn't about CGI, it's about Michelle Obama's classmate.

Yes, it IS about CGI... there were examples from their past where they failed to handle big jobs for the Canadian government. I find it hard to believe they were a 'low' bidder at $600m for a functioning WEBSITE.

 

[Cancel 2016.2]

17,000 an hour baby, read it and weep!

How long would that take to process 30mm apps?

 

[christiefan915]

Yes, it IS about CGI... there were examples from their past where they failed to handle big jobs for the Canadian government. I find it hard to believe they were a 'low' bidder at $600m for a functioning WEBSITE.

Then why this below? Why do you think CGI got it?

"Why would even the most managerially incompetent administration in history hire a firm with that sort of track record to handle its signature project? Well, call me cynical, but the Daily Caller has noted that the senior vice president of the company was a classmate of Michelle Obama at Princeton, and spent “Christmas with the Obamas” at the White House seven months after she got her job at CGI.




Oh... well, that just has to be a coincidence..."

 

[Big Money]

How long would that take to process 30mm apps?

Assuming it's a real number, and I've seen zero evidence that it is.

 

[Cancel 2016.2]

Then why this below? Why do you think CGI got it?

"Why would even the most managerially incompetent administration in history hire a firm with that sort of track record to handle its signature project? Well, call me cynical, but the Daily Caller has noted that the senior vice president of the company was a classmate of Michelle Obama at Princeton, and spent “Christmas with the Obamas” at the White House seven months after she got her job at CGI.




Oh... well, that just has to be a coincidence..."

are you kidding... that is the entire point... CGI did NOT have a good track record at handling big projects... so yes, it lends credence to the cronyism comment.

 

[christiefan915]

are you kidding... that is the entire point... CGI did NOT have a good track record at handling big projects... so yes, it lends credence to the cronyism comment.

Let's put the comments in order and then I'll ask my question again.

SF: Why would even the most managerially incompetent administration in history hire a firm with that sort of track record to handle its signature project? Well, call me cynical, but the Daily Caller has noted that the senior vice president of the company was a classmate of Michelle Obama at Princeton, and spent “Christmas with the Obamas” at the White House seven months after she got her job at CGI. Oh... well, that just has to be a coincidence...

CF: This isn't about CGI, it's about Michelle Obama's classmate.

SF: Yes, it IS about CGI... there were examples from their past where they failed to handle big jobs for the Canadian government.

CF: Why do you think CGI got it?

SF: CGI did NOT have a good track record at handling big projects... so yes, it lends credence to the cronyism comment.

It's pretty clear your post was about cronyism. If not, why do you think CGI got it?

 

[christiefan915]

Assuming it's a real number, and I've seen zero evidence that it is.

What kind of evidence do you want? Be specific.