What in the world? I know that civil government is famous for inefficiency, over-spending, corruption, larceny, and just plain stupid, but this beggars belief. After the feds fired CGI Federal for its very expensive and ultimately botched design of Healthcare.gov, the IRS awarded the same company a $4.5 million contract to create its Obamacare tax program. What? Why?
Scott Amey, the general counsel for the non-profit Project on Government Oversight, which reviews government contracting, examined the IRS contract with CGI.
“CGI was the poster child for government failure,” he told The Daily Caller. “I am shocked that the IRS has turned around and is using them for Obamacare IT work.”
Washington was not the only city that has been fed up with CGI on healthcare.
Last year, CGI was fired by the liberal states of Vermont and Massachusetts for failing to deliver on their Obamacare websites.
The Obamacare health website in Massachusetts never worked, despite the state paying $170 million to CGI.
Wow. Just wow. So why exactly is CGI Federal even being considered for this kind of work? We know private companies are not likely to hire CGI Federal, since private companies have to spend their own money, but why would even a government agency hire CGI Federal after such a long string of failures? I don’t know.
But I can say with little hesitancy that this feels like a pretty classic case of “gonnegtions”—who you know. Why is CGI Federal so chummy with the federal government? Perhaps one reason was uncovered in an opinion piece in the usually spotty Huffington Post:
Michele Obama’s classmate at Princeton is a senior vice-president at CGI. The idea that this had nothing to do with using CGI stretches credulity, but the patronage parade isn’t over.
Designing the national healthcare site is Teal Media, founded by the Design Manager of Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign, Jessica Teal. Teal has alternated between claiming credit for their work on the site, and removing all online references to their work regarding healthcare.gov.
Our investigation has uncovered that the HealthCare.gov user interface contract went to a small “garage startup” company, Development Seed. Their general manager is Dave Cole who is the former Obama administration executive in charge of Whitehouse.gov. Our sources say Development Seed needed the insider connections of Cole to land the plum healthcare website contract.
So there you have it. In order to get multiple government contracts worth millions of dollars even though you have no idea what you’re doing, you just have to be friends with the White House. I guess that counts me out then.