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.
“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.