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$292 Million Down The Drain: White House Fires Main Obamacare IT Contractor
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:
That lack of expertise explains why in building healthcare.gov, the government turned to industry contractors; in particular, to CGI Federal, a subsidiary of CGI Group, a Canadian company. To those uninitiated in the dark art of government contracting, it seems scandalous that CGI, a company most Americans had never heard of, a company that is not located in Silicon Valley (where President Obama has plenty of Internet superstar friends who could have formed a dazzling brain trust to implement his signature legislation) but rather in Montreal, could be chosen as the lead contractor for the administration’s most important initiative. While right-wing news outlets have focused on the possible relationship between Toni Townes-Whitley, senior vice president for civilian-agency programs at CGI Federal, and Michelle Obama, both of whom were 1985 Princeton graduates, CGI’s selection is probably more an example of a dysfunctional system than it is a scandal. “A lot of the companies in Silicon Valley don’t do business with the government at that level [the level required for federal contracting],” explains Soloway. “It is very burdensome, and the rules make it very unattractive.” Indeed, government contractors have to meet a whole host of requirements contained in a foot-thick book, including cost accounting and excessive auditing, to prove that they are not profiting too much off the American taxpayer. Hence, there tends to be a relatively small, specialized group of companies that compete for this work, even on such critical matters as healthcare.gov.
Actually it is a scandal. And it is a bigger scandal that at least $292 million in taxpayer cash was literally flushed down the drain and all we have to show for it is a website that crashes when the seemingly impossible happens, and more than a few hundred people try to log in at the same time. Then again perhaps, since it's no longer 1993, someone in the administration should take responsibility for this? Or maybe it was just Bush's fault again (and it snowed in December).
Keep in mind, CGI's coding disaster was so epic, there actually is a flowchart indicating just how many errors in healthcare.gov there are.
So with CGI out of the picture, who will take over administration of the Obamacare portal? WaPo has the answer: "Federal health officials are preparing to sign a 12-month contract worth roughly $90 million, probably early next week, with a different company, Accenture, after concluding that CGI has not been effective enough in fixing the intricate computer system underpinning the federal Web site, HealthCare.gov, the individual said."
And this pearl: "Because of time constraints, CMS is awarding the Accenture contract on a sole-source basis, according to the person familiar with the decision."
So is that what kickbacks to Michelle Obama are called now?
We can be sure of one thing: this replacement will be an even more epic disaster and will ultimately result in over a billion taxpayer dollars being spent on a program that was doomed to failure from the beginnin regardless.
Accenture, which is one of the world’s largest consulting firms, has extensive experience with computer systems on the state level, and it built California’s new health insurance exchange. But it has not done substantial work on any federal health-care program.
There is a small chance Accenture won't be as much of a debacle as CGI. Keep in mind that the government is very familiar with the consulting company's skill se: after all the DOJ itself sued it!
The decision to turn to Accenture puts the project in the hands of a government contractor that has significant technological expertise but also signed a high-profile legal settlement with the Justice Department less than three years ago over its contracting practices. Accenture had one contracting dispute with the federal government that ended up in court, agreeing in September 2011 to pay $63 million to settle a Justice Department lawsuit alleging that it improperly benefitted from recommending specific hardware and software as part of government contracts, as well as inflating prices on contracts and distorting the federal bidding process.
In retrospect who are we kidding: Accenture is certainly the best replacement to CGI... if the intention is to keep bleeding the government's taxpayer funded coffers dry. And why not: if said coffers run out of money, the Fed can just print some moar. Which, as it turns out, is the endgame: as we reported earlier, Jeffrey Lacker explicitly said that the Fed is now looking at the impact on the economy from Obamacare... or else QE5.
Not to be confused with Q.E.D.
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a job lost that is Bullish. actually. http://hedge.ly/1dk9zCP
PEANUTZ COMPARED TO $85BILL/MO! BARGAIN!
Somebody actually got fired? Holy shit!
I guess being a friend of Moochelle isn't as good as being a friend of Barry.
How about providing a list of the new multimillionaires created with the taxpayer dollars wasted on this clusterfuck where no one is accountable or imprisoned.
"Dear Valued Client,
Sorry you are dissatisifed with our software. Your $239 Million refund check is in the mail.
Please feel free to hand us another multimillion dollar contract when The Hoi Poloi are not looking.
Sincerely,
Your Fat Cat Wealthy Gubmint Contractor"
The kicker is the SalesForce.com, one of the largest IT CRM firms on the planet, offered to build the ACA for FREE... That's right, FREE... This included building the site, hosting it, performing maintenance and updates for FIVE FUCKING YEARS, FOR FREE!!!!
The Obama administration declined... Draw your own conclusions...
It was good for someone's economy, there would have been a crisis without it, we needed jobs, he told me to do it, it's cramers fault, crisis bitches!*
Isn't this the company that had Moooochele's sorority sister as the contact to close the deal?
The First Wookie strikes again.
-30-
Obamacare and its broke-dick web site is a two cycle engine that has been run on straight gas until seizure.
But then that’s what they wanted all along because the traitors in con-gress just want the insurance companies out of the way so that they can torture the nation, prolong the pain and become as successful as the UK’s NHS.
Clearly a job for Vandelay Enterprises.
George? Pick up the phone.
Nobody ever said Obozo was a savvy businessman.
What a bunch of amateurs.
If they had offered the same for $500 million plus $100 million annual maintenance costs, the administration would have fallen over itself to give them the contract!
Playing the Devil's Advocate, I know one of the consultants in the early stages (he resigned in frustration and got another job - he was American) and what he describes is sheer chaos - hourly changes from DC, interference from the feds, inabilty to get answers. Just interpreting the law - converting the writing to software - took months since no one had any idea how to translate the legal gibberish. Some things were never explained or decided. Then there was the inability to communicate between groups, the lack of a central coordinator, the refusal to volume test in order to get good results, connections between Group A who supplied the answer to Group B (who accepted it unquestioningly), the "back end" that was always going to be written "soon", the rush to put the crap in production despite objections from seasoned analysts, then (as he relates from colleagues) the wild scramble to "fix" the thing....did I leave out anything?
Professionally, it will be difficult to step in and take over. It will take time to understand system architecture and all the problems. It's a job I would not relish.
I first thought you were talking about a SFDC consultant, then it became clear you were not.
I do ETL Development for a living and I wouldn't touch that mess with a ten foot pole, neither in new nor existing status. The biggest part of one's time invested only in CYA from day one, thanks but no thanks.
I'm usually all for blaming Obama for everything, but in this particular case, the Federal government is forbidden BY LAW from accepting pro-bono work. The logic behind that theory is, unless a monetary value changes hands for work done, the Federal government wouldn't have grounds to sue in the event that something goes wrong. I'm sure at a certain level, that makes sense -- but DC's been way past whatever "certain" level that was for years now.
I worked for many years as a consultant specialising in trying to rescue major IT projects gone bad. God, how I loved Accidenture, sorry, Accenture! I could have worked for ever cleaning up after them. The amazing thing is, no matter how badly they screwed up they continued to win government business regardless. I could never figure out why (cough).
Keyser, just for amusement purposes...
are you a digital marketing intern for SalesForce.com or just another cog in the machine?
The didn't get fire so much as they made $292 mill on the initial contract and it wasn't renewed. They still walk away with a shit ton of money and delivered something worth about 10 grand.
$292 million. That's almost a million dollars they could have given to every person in America.
Only if the US has 292 people. LOL
that's the goal..remove the goyim!
He must have been one of the website designers. No wonder it could only handle 10 people at a time.
um, think your math's a little off there...
maff?
@harbanger
You're on to something. Give everyone $1m in HSA account. Only can be used for healthcare. Use it or lose it. Get fat, need rascal scooter, countless MRI's, smoke cigs, draw down the $1M before end of life, your loss.
In the long run, much cheaper for taxpayers than the cluster we have now.
only if you curb it over say 30 years... cause if everyone is able to spend $1million the first doctors visit will be $900,000 since just cuz (see also tuition)
They will follow the ACORN model. Change their name to ICG and Obomber will hire them on to write the new federal voter tabulation application. Winning.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/more-millionaires-congress-ever-112816638....
Moochelle the Wookie just couldn't keep her "friends".
$292mm?
Shit, man, that's just Arod numbers.
Nothing to see here.......move along.
They've gone from bad-ass (Breaking Bad) to smelly-ass (Breaking Wind). Get Heisenberg!
Seriously though, what passes for Program Management and Project Management is a joke in many cases. It's not so much of "What you know", but "Who you know and who you blow" that counts: It's one big Circle Jerk, one big Cluster-Fuck.
Captain, can't you just like fire a salvo of photon torpedoes into Washington DC? We'll make it worth your while!
Dutch Central Bank Tight-lipped About Gold Policy
http://www.ingoldwetrust.ch/dutch-central-bank-tight-lipped-gold-policy
I can't write code either, but I'll do it for free!
...Why not just hire out an Israeli IT outfit?
Israel already controls most everything else in the USSA.
They're all too busy working where the real money is made: Wall Street and NSA.
waiting for ZH to blame Bush
They should have just used drupal and done it for 10 bucks.
I miss the old days when Presidential scandals involved blowjobs, arms deals and movie icon fucking.
This is too high tech for me.
Were they cripted in Mexican or Chinese?
Sounds like the programmers who wrote the code for the Climate Forecasting Models for UN's global warming scam. they were hacked and; surprise, surprise, the programs turned out to be childish nonsense. How amazing.
"Childish Nonsense" Funny after hearing about Obamas "Promise Zones" yesterday I told a buddy that the US is being run by pre-school teachers. Shit is getting so fucking pathetic, I can not even stand to read or hear about this juvenile horseshit anymore.
I guess they'll just have to outsource it to Pakistan.
No, the work will be done in Mumbai.
About 3 hours of tapered QE. Pocket change, my friends.
I get no credit for reporting on this (exclusively, before anyone else had it) 2 months ago?
Mostly here: http://thebullelephant.com/healthcare-gov-is-an-identity-theft-machine/
with some more here: http://thebullelephant.com/it-cant-be-fixed/
and here: http://thebullelephant.com/son-of-it-cant-be-fixed/
Give kitty some hat tip love please!
Oh also, the chart is missing a note the #1 security problem regarding healthcare.gov - the fact that the highly insecure website can be used to data mine almost any major government database! For all we know, this thing could have been mining SS, VA, IRS, DHS etc. databases for months now, and might still be doing it!
One can only imagine how those client conference calls went between HHS and CGI.
Are you kidding? They're probably all friends. They asked each other about their spouses and kids and then got down to damage control planning. After the meeting, they all went out to dinner (at taxpayer expense).
CGI does have a proven business model.
They learned it from the US governemnt.
1. Make wild promises in order to get the job
2. Never deliver on those promises
3. Grossly over budget on every project
4. Zero accountability
wait a second, that's practically every enterprise IT services contractor.
It's a long tedious process to get a government contract, but if you're incompetent or a crook, its worth the time and effort, as the premium on the rate you can charge and the lack of oversight generally make for very lucrative billing - particularly when you consider the fact that normal qualifications like 'capable of delivering a working product' aren't applicable in government deals. They may have staffed this development with highschool students, or sociology grads, or people who'd been working at 7-11, or Indian farmers, and paid them $8/hour while charging out at $250. Pretty lucrative premium, well worth the transient infamy.
"You'll never work in this town again!"
They'll have another contract in 3 months.
...and probably with the Federal government - 'I know we probably shouldn't hire them, but they did such a nice presentation - did you see how they used our logos!!? And besides, they are on the 'certified vendor' list...'.
We must work at the same company because I've been next to that upper level manager because some company was able to right click on the company logo, copy it, and then paste it into their powerpoint. Tech savy. We need to work with this company.
You made my day and night!
"They may have staffed this development with highschool students, or sociology grads, or people who'd been working at 7-11"
More like an ad posted at the local laundromat with tear-off phone numbers . . .
"IT workers wanted. No experience necessary. Excellent working conditions and top pay for the right individual." - leave message
"Because of time constraints, CMS is awarding the Accenture contract on a sole-source basis, according to the person familiar with the decision."
WTF...Accenture is not even a US company! Those fuckers moved their headquarters off shore to avoid taxes!
But hey the IRS is stocking on security forces to make sure that us little people pay our taxes.
If I am not mistaken,wasn't Accenture (Ass-Enter) the consulting arm of Arthur Anderson who were closed down by federal regulators after the Enron fiasco?
Obamacare the video game. ,It will be a lot like fallout but without the bottle caps
"Grand Theft Health Care"
No it will be more like the STALKER series with brain scorchers in a 4 mile dead zone around DC
But I still have not collected 50 of the Star Sunset Sasparilla bottle caps!
More like COD where gov (not terrorists?) grope people to death in the airport terminal.
A typical game scenario:
You enter the door marked wart removal and wake up to find out your kidney is gone and you've got a bill for $100K.
Let's get this game production going. Monty Python can serve as (very competent) consultants!
"It also contacts the company Equifax to verify the consumer's income."
Did I read that right? Does the IRS (or the States) share personal income information with Equifax?
Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. The holy trinity. Plugged into everything. I doubt they know your (exact) income but they know your credit history for sure. In fact, Obamacare can't verify your IDENTITY if they don't have a file on you (i.e. you have no credit history or you gave the wrong information).
F O R W A R D........
bitchez!
For $300 MM X 2 they could have hired 20,000 people for a year and had the work done manually.
Curious why a US tech company was not chosen to start with and is again not chosen this round and why there is no real outcry.
Moochelle has classmates.
Massachusetts is suing them. 28,000 people have been thrown into Mass Health (medicare) system because the software will not work.
No way to find out who qualifies for what. Applicants cannot pick a plan and pay. Everyone who applied through the Health connection was mailed a letter with a temporary ID# for MassHealth. Need to call doctors and find one who will take it while they wait to actually get health insurance. I forsee an uptick in ER visits due to the fact that calling around and telling the docs you have a tepmorary ID# will not get you far.
I am one of these people. I live on the border w/ RI and the closest medical facilites are in RI. I know which plan I want but cannot get it until they get this staightend out. I will pay cash or goto the ER before I start finding new doctors for a hopefully temporary mess.
That's odd, CGI stock is down sharply today - I would have thought a big spike would be in order on this news.
So all CGI employees are now out of the labor force?
Probably not. They're likely working on other govermment projects.
Just a hope
Canada's job numbers today reveal a loss of 45,000 jobs...
Keyser
Go to Reuters.com. But thank goodness 18,000 government employees were hired !
The way these things work is that the main company subcontracts the actual work so all of those people are just switching over and being subcontracted by Accenture. The hope is that Accenture supervises these same developers better.
For a Govie cluster-fuk a 10X factor is a better guesstimate for the final pricetag. So $1B is likley nearer the lower end of the range for this fiasco.
$292 million for that web project is CRAZYYY. Im a web developer and the largest and most complicated web project we've worked on was like $250K.
We have line of business applications where total investment is over $20 million, but these are apps that have been around for 10 years with constant updates and enhancements. Millions of lines of code. CGI is so full of shit their eyes are brown.
CGI - yeah tell me about it! :-)
i knew it!
you do work for SalesForce.com ;-)
I'm in the web biz too--and yeah, it's an insane figure. We should be getting holographic sign-up experiences and ability to teleport to the nearest federal office for that amount.
It's the cost of all the time that goes in dealing with bureaucrats and having to cope with continuously changing requirements.
My friend I posted about before Christmas, to date still does not have coverage. Her last quote was $90 per month and her latest quote is $729 per month.........the kicker is that they won't complete the transaction and take her money. She talked to an ACORN (type) half-wit that seriously could not read well AND that person had to be helped in writing down the amount $1,500.00 (to fill in income blank). So far my friend has been on the hook for all of her meds. Have to wonder how many are in the same boat. Forward progressives!
$729 a month?
Yeah. That's cheap, doncha know? It leaves the person with over $270 month for food, housing, etc. But think of the peace of mind that having health insurance will bring. Priceless.
"So far my friend has been on the hook for all of her meds. Forward progressives!"
Do you realize how fucking stupid you sound? You cant complain about it if you've chosen to depend on it.
look the loyal acorn ZHers are marking you down
Tell your friend this from me, 'Elections have consequences'.
OMG, that loser actually fired someone? Wow. Start the presses.
$292 million equates to what, 6 hours of Fed government deficit creation at the current pace?
And let's not forget the "Obamacare portal" problems are the tip of the iceberg.
a fucking french, quebec-canada based IT firm - CGI - why the flying fuck were these french fuckers tampering with barry-care to begin with???
nice job Barry - great choice in going with American - you fuck
$292 million - that would create 292 ObamaJobs in the US.
The kicker is the SalesForce.com, one of the largest IT CRM firms on the planet, offered to build the ACA for FREE... That's right, FREE... This included building the site, hosting it, performing maintenance and updates for FIVE FUCKING YEARS, FOR FREE!!!!
The Obama administration declined... Draw your own conclusions...
are you sure?
i haven't been able to find a reputable source mentioning that...
even if it's a true ("or a bullshit would have done it, but only mention after the media fiasco") statement from marc benioff, then it's simply one company taking advantage of an opportunity to advertise their services.
translation:
that communication was not targeted at you, but at CIOs/CTOs who want to "create business value" for their multi-national corporations and think that "cloud" CRM/analytics might be the way to go (because they don't have the internal talent to make it happen).
Don't pay them. What are they going to do? Sue the Federal Government. No private company would pay them. No jury would pay them. This looks like another ObamaTheft like Solyndra.
They've already been paid by billing every month. So what the Government will bounce one month on them is the worst they can do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSAoEf1Ib58
Expect the grotesque FAIL contortions to get more extreme as time passes...
On second thoughts, $292 million is chump change - Michelle Obama is going to spend much more than that on vacations over 8 years.
None of this really matters. Except for those working at real jobs, its all free money for the 20+ % who are on some form of perpetual welfare most of their lives. It is also funny money for the top 10+ % who are enjoying the gifts of a FED managed economy.
The real victims are the approx., 14% unemployed and the hard working 50+ % Americans who have a job and are one layoff away from losing it. Yet - Our Congressional criters and the Administration are pushing for the legalization of 10 to 15 million undocumented workers from Mexico and Latin America. Workers - who by their Hispanic/Latin heritage and once "legalized" ALL will have Minority Affirmative Action Hiring protections, equal to Black US citizens and ahead of US Born White citizens.
Only in the US can this be happening. Unfortunatly, those that are aware of what is going on, are forced to live under the collective insanity of the sheeple and the low information voters.
Here is a "new idea." If the Congress will legalize the 10 to 15 million undocumented - How about repealing the Affirmative Action - Minority Status, that all Hispanics currently enjoy - under law.
newworldorder
And since all government employees-federal, state, city or county get paid out of private sector taxation, it really only matters to the shrinking minority of private sector employees.
Hey, come on here.
IT is one of the few Big-Gov and Corporate scams that the semi-austistics and introverts get to participate in.
Wait till the stories about call center scams. After the website blew up they converted over to contracts with call center companies to take calls and walk people through the sign up process since the site did not work.
I worked in call centers and can tell you it is easy to screw clients over (IE .gov or us taxpayers) with contracts charging per minute per call etc.
Moochelle probably has friends in that business also. What a fucking verguenza as we say here in Costa Rica.
Accenture??? I think I just vomited.
Yes. Classic corporate drones. I worked with them in the 1980's when they were Arthur Anderson and again later as "Accenture". Lower scumbags I never saw. Very highly paid, dedicated, and controlling but they make more of a mess than solve things. I know one guy whose wife complained about his commute hours and he packed up left the wife and moved. Idiot. Later caught him searching our Vice Presidents office w/o permission. He talked himself out of it, those guys are good and attached politically. They would do anything to become "partners" in those days...100 hour weeks, unquestionable loyalty, stealing, you name it. No morals at all.
i think you described all consulting firms. not just accenture.
not everyone working in those firms is like that these days.
you can be "lucky" as a customer and get a good team that delivers. this outcome is most closely connected to your organization's ability to critically assess if the guys across the table make a no-BS argument and demonstrate why they are the best of all available options and to sign a deliverables-based SoW that actually addresses the requirements analyzed as necessary to achieve the objectives.
$292 million to build a website and interfaces. Unbelievable. A dedicated team of 10 could probably do it for 10 million.
How about the three 20-yr olds who did it for free? http://www.healthsherpa.com
"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."
Cognitive dissonance. The goobmint didn't do it, the contractor did it.
Now they need to fire Obamacare and Obama!
I wonder if this was the result of Barry's "IT CZAR" actually making a difference.
..."stands to be paid".
So it's not been paid for yet.
Several million people have signed up for Obama Care so far in spite of the failure. Amazing
Can we fire the guy who hired these incompetants?
Should have listed to sell the damn insurance at Amazon.
They may lose money but at least the ladies get their 50 Shades of Grey.
Undoubtedly staffed with legions of worthless Indian programmers. These fookers are absolutley the dregs of the IT world. Even the so-called smartest and best among them are incredibly inferior to their American and Canadian counterparts. I have seen it and suffered from it for 20+ years now.
"No way! It can't be true! My company hires them because yada yada yada . . ." you say, huh? Well, welcome to the lie, friend. They are third world intellects with third world educations and third world ubilities. Hey, you are on Zerohedge for a reason. You appreciate exposing a lie, or having one exposed for you.
+1
a lot of companies think they can outsmart the vendor in getting a "savings" from them. you're going to get what you pay for from other companies who are structured in a way whose internal business units/functions are also trying to gain a "savings" from each other.
Here, here trader1! IT was commoditized 20 years ago. We all became a barrel of crude oil, interchangeable for a going price. Buy your IT on the cheap when and where you can get it. The Indians played a part in keeping that price down. But, as I extrapolate something from your comments, we get what we pay for.
My mother's sister aunt works from home making over $10,000 a month! All this with no real training!! She a contractor for CGI and creates websites, like healthcare.gov...
Is she Indian?
No, Kenyan
Well, you have me there. I have never worked with Kenyans. Just Russians (fairly good usually), asians (always great but suffer immensely from language barriers) and home grown North Americans (among the best but always with a small percentage of spoilers).
Like your mother's sister's aunt said, and she must know my co-worker's third cousin's nephew that actually signed up for the ACA Benefit at the CGI-designed www3.healthscare.guv and received a triple-platinum plan for only $9.99 a month, no deductibles or co-pays. The nephew is tickled pink because they even cover transgender surgery. An iPhone with a free five-year contract is being offered as a signing bonus.
Yeah, I think I saw a late night infomercial about how you can make tons working from home for CGI Federal...
Accenture is headquartered in Ireland, the land of government efficiency. Most of their programmers live in India, land of the wage slaves and the Adarsh Housing Society Scam (featuring Devyani Khobragade).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accenture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adarsh_Housing_Society_scam
Thanks for the light, eh? Give me 10 home-grown Canadian programmers including a couple of data base architects and a few network engineers and we would have an Obama Care web portal rivaled by none.
Signed, the angry American.
Infinite money enables infinite government and infinite waste.
But this out-of-thin-air infinite fiat money is not free. On the contrary it comes at a very high cost for at least three reasons.
The first is that the economic resources the fiat money is used to purchase don't materialize out of thin air. The circle is only made complete when it is realized that these economic are paid for by the dilution of the value of every dollar held in every wallet and bank account. It is embezzlement of wealth just as much as when the bartender waters down the liquor.
The second cost is in how it distorts economic signals and thus fools people into making unwise investments. In particular, projects that have large amounts of debt over long time horizons may seem to be sustainable yet are less so when interest rates return to rational levels.
The last cost is the interest on the borrowed money must be repaid, and since government never intends to pay off the debt, that means the taxpayer is never off the hook for paying interest. In a different context, say when consumer advocates complain about how credit card debt multiplies with low payments and lax lending policies, we would say the debtor can never get free of the debt and has become the serf of the lender.
I would also add that since government policy tends to be viewed as some level of moral standard, when government can live beyond its means, some citizens tend to think they can too. None of this is good for the fiscal or moral health of the nation.
$300,000,000? that's about what we spend in a couple of months in Afghanistan.
They should have hired Kramerica Industries.
to top it all off CGI isn't even an USA company ... it's a fucking canadian company!
What? You're telling me the US has been done over by the Canadians? That's a change.
Thats Michelle's soroity sister. I guess the stateside based executives are now going to want their post-contract political contributions back.
At first all complex Gov programs breed content, then contempt.
Even/especially with private contractors who have insider contacts. Total con-job.
I've been around long enough to know how greasy Strategic Sourcing can get in the private sector when dealing with large firms (1/4 schmoozing, 3/4 merit). I can only imagine what happens to this ratio when dealing with the Gov. Anti-corruption laws notwithstanding...
How do you spell "Revolving Door" of Gov Jobs Career Management?
Stroke's the word: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yamlO7uGPTk
CGI share office space with my company. Do you think they'll get to keep their Teslas and BMWs?
Insane, criminal dumbfucks.
Why don't they just direct everyone to that Obamacare website the 20-year old kids put up in 3 days? http://www.healthsherpa.com Answer: because it embarasses the hell out of them.
Read this--hilarious (Mark Steyn): "Obamacare is as close to a Hoover Dam as latter-day Big Government gets. Which is why its catastrophic launch is sobering even for those of us who've been saying for five years it would be a disaster. It's as if at the ribbon-cutting the Hoover Dam cracked open and washed away the dignitaries; as if the Golden Gate Bridge was opened to traffic with its central span missing; as if Apollo 11 had taken off for the moon but landed on Newfoundland. Obama didn't have to build a dam or a bridge or a spaceship, just a database and a website. This is his world, the guys he hangs with, the zeitgeist he surfs so dazzlingly, Apple and Google, apps and downloads. But his website's a sclerotic dump, and the database is a hacker's heaven, and all that's left is the remorseless snail mail of millions and millions of cancellation letters." Etc...
http://www.steynonline.com/5889/those-who-cant-govern
In the private world they would have been fired a long F---ING time ago.
Gee that's great they fired the contractor. About friggen time, eh? I don't suppose we get any sort of a refund... So when do they fire the retards like Sebelius ("I'm responsible") who ALLOWED the contractor to suck up 300 million of our money? How much does Sebelius make? I bet it's a LOT more than I make. I bet it is.
I notice the communist MSM is trying to skewer NJ Governor Christi. His stock rose 10 points with me when he fired the conniving little bitch that screwed him over that bridge fiasco. At least he has the NERVE to fire a cockroach when he sees one. Can't say that about Barry, can ya? Isn't it just great to have "leaders" like Obama? Imagine what the country is gonna look like in 50 years.
Total failure. No payment should be made.
He'll recoup it in speaking fees and campaign donations... the taxpayer? Nyet!
Perfect example of GIGO. The law is garbage and that is compounded multiple times by the continuous changes from Obama and his morons minions.
True Accenture is a much better choice for the project but the original folks who wanted the money didn't have the balls to tell HHS that the time frame was too short and there's still part of it not done..
You have IBM Wason saying it's machines have not had had enough time to learn and of course I brought up my Google machine learning story here where they suspended my account and their algorithms said I was a real duck as the machines had not learned that Duck could be a surname and assigned me to being a fowl.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2014/01/are-worlds-it-infrastructures-tod...
It's what I call the "Sebelius Syndrome" and there are more than just her that suffer, try just about all of Congress...like I said the government and world are getting a real cold hard lesson on complexities of IT infrastructure and yes we are hostages of our our infrasructure, working or non working.
One thing too that folks forget or don't know is the 3 year reinsurance plan the feds handed out in case everything really goes downhill with profits...keep this in mind as they are getting propped up just like the banks did, but maybe not as much money but feds gave them a safety net for 3 years.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2014/01/obamacare-re-insurance-3-year.html
Choosing a contractor is daunting project...and witch hunts for blame are prooving to be less effective. Government doesn't want to touch anything with math and Richard Cordray proved that on the Daily Show this week. He's a wet math noodle.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2014/01/need-any-more-proof-that-data-sel...
The Sebelius Syndrome is more deadly almost than H1N1 as it not only affectst the afflicted but also the rest of us, just a data and logic disease verus pigs.
It was never about building a seb site , it was always about looting the treasury. it was never about health care it was just about control. SCOTUS said it was a tax scheme. One giant step towards turning our country into a socialist cesspool. People voted for change, what else could they expect from a community organizer?
As a software developer who has worked alongside Accenture in past projects I can say with certainty that this project is doomed.
Accenture was formerly known as Anderson Consulting and I have always maintained that if you are doing a good job you probably shouldn't have to change your name.
The more Indians are on the software development team the greater the chance of failure. When it comes to software development those guys suck cow balls.