Lead Contractor On Health-Care Web Site Led By Execs From Troubled IT Company 227
thomst writes "The Washington Post's Jerry Markon and Alice Crites report that 'The lead contractor on the dysfunctional Web site for the Affordable Care Act is filled with executives from a company that mishandled at least 20 other government IT projects, including a flawed effort to automate retirement benefits for millions of federal workers, documents and interviews show. CGI Federal, the main Web site developer, entered the U.S. government market a decade ago when its parent company purchased American Management Systems, a Fairfax County contractor that was coming off a series of troubled projects. CGI moved into AMS's custom-made building off Interstate 66, changed the sign outside and kept the core of employees, who now populate the upper ranks of CGI Federal.'"
Re:But their bid was lower! (Score:5, Interesting)
What bid . . .?
Revealed: Michelle Obama's Princeton classmate is top executive at firm that that built disastrous Obamacare website after being awarded no-bid $93m contract
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2477403/Michelle-Os-Princeton-classmate-exec-company-built-Obamacare-website.html [dailymail.co.uk]
. . . it just shows you where the real value of a good education is . . .
Re:But their bid was lower! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:But their bid was lower! (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason government contracts are broken is because they exist.
For some reason, in the US it is more politically acceptable to pay a private firm $200K per worker for a government contract than it is to pay $150K per worker to hire people to do the job. And this is not a partisan thing, since the biggest area where this kind of silliness happens is obscenely high military budget, and that gets reapproved without much serious question. It creates a lot of opportunity for graft among anybody controlling a government purchase, costing even more public money unnecessarily.
By contrast, the UK government has an IT department that is in charge of all government websites. If they need more people to do the job, they hire them. If they need fewer, they lay people off. And overall, they get better results for less money because that one department can coordinate efforts in a way the multiple US contractors simply can't do.