Health-care Web site’s lead contractor employs executives from troubled IT company

Jerry Markon and Alice Crites | The Washington Post | November 15, 2013

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.

They include CGI Federal’s current and past presidents, the company’s chief technology officer, its vice president for federal health care and its health IT leader, according to company and other records. More than 100 former AMS employees are now senior executives or consultants working for CGI in the Washington area.

Open Health News' Take: 

One of the problems with today's society in the US is there are too many "business adminstrators" who are addicted to play the middle man game when it comes to technical contract work.  Trim this excessive "fat" to keep the deal lean, versus having non-subject matter experts try to advise on technical matters where it counts please.  That means also doing one's homework in researching who actually is a proper "subject matter expert" as well versus going back into the "middle man game" in passing the hat or buck.

Crawford Rainwater, Blogger @ Open Health News and CEO & President, The Linux ETC Company