Posted on 10/15/2013 2:51:09 PM PDT by lowbridge
Federal officials considered only one firm to design the Obamacare health insurance exchange website that has performed abysmally since its Oct. 1 debut.
Rather than open the contracting process to a competitive public solicitation with multiple bidders, officials in the Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid accepted a sole bidder, CGI Federal, the U.S. subsidiary of a Canadian company with an uneven record of IT pricing and contract performance.
CMS officials are tight-lipped about why CGI was chosen or how it happened. They also refuse to say if other firms competed with CGI, or if there was ever a public solicitation for building Healthcare.gov, the backbone of Obamacare’s problem-plagued web portal.
Instead, it appears they used what amounts to a federal procurement system loophole to award the work to the Canadian firm.
(Excerpt) Read more at theblaze.com ...
Opening government contracts up to competitive bidding would mean that the most efficient company would get all the contracts. Then the other companies with higher costs would go out of business, which would not only be unfair, but result in a monopoly. Since everyone agrees that competition is essential for a healthy business environment it’s necessary eliminate open bidding to preserve competition.
/sarc
TWO big companies in Canada FIRED THEM BEFORE THIS FIASCO!!! WHO GOT THE MONEY???/ What SWISSS BANK ACCOUNTS did this go into??
It is a virtual surety that whoever granted a $600 million no-bid contract,
also got a nice chunk of “thank you” under the table.
Parent, largest Canadian tech company embedded with single payer health system in Canada
mmmm-I wonder what muslim he was “appeasing”?
I thought there were Federal Laws regulating vendor selection procedures.
Non competitive contracts like this can only be let in a national emergency, or if there is no known other firm that can fulfil the project requirements. The AFPI (Armed Forces Procurement Instructions) are quite clear on this. It also requires a “Finding and Determination” written by someone who has the authority for the purchase. This sounds like another little deviation from the law by the distinguished legal mind from Haaavard! More impeachable charges to add to the list. The “Buy America Act” was also conveniently discarded too I guess.
Michele Obama, Princeton ‘85, member Assoc. of Princeton Black Alumnus...presently first lady.
Toni McCall Townes-Whitley, Princeton ‘85, member Assoc. of Princeton Black Alumnus...presently Senior VP at CGI, since 2010, the prime contractor for the healthcare.gov website
In this article ....
http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/2537194
found this comment .....
“Toni Townes-Whitley, Senior Vice President at CGI Federal for Civilian Agency programs, is Princeton Class of 1985. Michelle Obama is Princeton Class of 1985. Both are members of Association of Black Princeton Alumni. Ask the questions, MSM.”
Don’t know if it’s accurate/true or not ... but it makes you wonder.
BLAME CANADA!!!
There certainly are. And the left had a melt-down arguing that Haliburton was a sole source vendor.
My inital concern re this award was that the vendor was offshore. Subsidiary = front.
Wonder if there is a connection between CGI Federal and CGI America?
CGI was founded by Serge Godin in June 1976 in Québec City, Canada.[5] In 2004 CGI purchased the majority of American Management Systems (AMS), acquiring the commercial business and all government business not related to national defense. Since 2009, a subsidiary of CGI Group, CGI Federal, has been awarded over $1.4 billion in U.S. federal contracts, including an over $90 million contract by the United States Department of Health and Human Services for establishment of what would become the software back-end of the federal health insurance marketplace website.[6] In May 2010, CGI announced the acquisition of Stanley, Inc., for an enterprise value of approximately $1.07 billion.[7] In August 2010, CGI finalized the acquisition of Stanley.[8]
CGI is one of four primary Recovery Audit Contractors, established by the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, responsible for auditing region B.[9]
In May 2012 CGI agreed to acquire the UK-based computer services company Logica for £1.7 billion in cash.[10][11] The acquisition was completed on 20 August 2012.[12]
In October 2013, following the October 1, 2013, launch of open-registration for insurance under the Affordable Care Act, CGI Federal came under media scrutiny[13] after numerous issues[14] surfaced with the federal health insurance marketplace, preventing many users from logging in and signing up for insurance through the site.
“I’d like to know what the “loophole” might be. There is something known as a sole source justification which must be signed off on by a senior official, SES or higher. If such a sole source justification was used, a FOI request needs to be made to reveal who signed it.”
Absolutely correct! Sole source government procurements need to first prove in writing and under the scrutiny of procurement officers that research has been done thoroughly and that no other company anywhere can carry out the work specifications needed. If that’s not the case, the procurement has to go out to competitive bid. There is no doubt that hundreds of companies could have set this up.
To come to this conclusion that one is going to use a “sole source” procurement, there would have first been “requests for information” of many companies specializing in large scale software projects to get an overview of how many have descriptions, proof and referrals of having done big projects successfully. The background of the various companies’ implementation staff is also requested and reviewed. What’s needed is not really all that complicated. It probably could have been done and done well for 12 million dollars in government expenditures for the software, testing and first year implementation. The cost of all the new federal staff is separate anyway. The fact that a lot of people would theoretically sign up does not make the software more complicated. That’s a matter of speed and computer memory and interfaces.
Maybe the Obamacare system’s failing was part of the plan all along to fail and bring America to chaos. I have had a similar experience with a new online state application system having internal software failures every time one signs on.
Every uninsured person in the nation could have had his insurance paid for a tiny fraction of this horrific waste of tax-payer treasury dollars. Now we learn, on top of everything else, that all the money goes to a foreign firm. There are certainly plenty of skilled IT firms in the U.S.
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