Tyler Durden:
Proving once again that if you want something done wrong, and preferably at massive cost overruns, then just leave it to the government, moments ago news broke that the main IT contractor behind the embarrassment that is healthcare.gov – CGI Federal – has been fired. Who could possibly foresee this? Well, anyone who had actually done some diligence on the clusterfuck that is CGI Federal, and which as WaPo profiled some time ago, “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.” Make that 21. “A year before CGI Group acquired AMS in 2004, AMS settled a lawsuit brought by the head of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, which had hired the company to upgrade the agency’s computer system. AMS had gone $60 million over budget and virtually all of the computer code it wrote turned out to be useless, according to a report by a U.S. Senate committee.” Sounds like the perfect people to hire in order to make a complete disaster out of the Obamacare portal – almost as if by design.
But the best news? Obama’s little tryst with CGI Federal cost US taxpayers only $292 million. As Vanity Fair revealed recently, “According to congressional testimony, CGI stands to be paid $292 million for its work on healthcare.gov.” And since the CGI replacement will eventually redo everything from scratch, this is $292 million that Obama may have as well burned.
We jest, but the incest between the Obama administration and CGI will one day be probed. According to recent revelations the ties run deep: