Health
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Team Obama Ends Contract with CGI Federal

Burgess COMMENTARY
PeterBurgess • a few seconds ago

There is nothing new about government making a mess of things. I remember as a student more than 50 years ago observing that 'the government could not organize a piss-up in a brewery'. Contracting out to the private sector does not solve any of the deep lack of management capacity in the government system because the contractors know how to game the system for their own goals. Ross Perot made a huge amount of wealth courtesy of government contracting in IT decades ago. CGI seems to have 'blown it' and it is perhaps unusual that they are being fired for their lack of performance.

It might serve us well to remember the screw ups that plagued Amazon in its early days ... and perhaps we should remember that Pay-Pal almost disappeared early in its life.

The Affordable Care Act or Obamacare is a step in the right direction, but the reform of the American healthcare industry is still a long way from what is required to make the industry as good as it should be. There are too many elements in the industry that make profit without adding anything to value and performance. The medical science should be as complex as it needs to be, but the financing, accounting and administration should be as simple and transparent as possible. Failing health has been a source of profit for too many for too long, while failing health has wiped out the wealth of too many who have had the bad luck to become seriously ill.

Peter Burgess - TrueValueMetrics Multi Dimension Impact Accounting
Peter Burgess

Team Obama Ends Contract with CGI Federal

Via Washington Post:

The Obama administration has decided to jettison CGI Federal, the main IT contractor that was responsible for building the defect-ridden online health insurance marketplace and has been immersed in the work of repairing it, according to a person familiar with the matter.

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.

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. . .

Prediction: This is the first step in the Feds starting from scratch on HealthCare.gov 2.0. - Greg Pollowitz