CGI Federal

See the following -

Front-End HealthCare.gov Problems May Be Masking Bigger Back-End Problems

Sam Baker | Nextgov | October 25, 2013

By now, pretty much everyone knows that HealthCare.gov, the main portal to access the law's new insurance exchanges, doesn't work. When the site first launched, hardly anyone could create an account to begin shopping for coverage. And though the registration problems have gotten better, enrollment is still an uphill climb. Read More »

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.

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Officials Spent Just Two Weeks Testing HealthCare.gov Prior To Launching It

Joseph Marks | Nextgov | October 24, 2013

Contractors that helped develop the Obama Administration’s troubled online health insurance marketplace HealthCare.gov told lawmakers on Thursday they wish they’d had more time to test the site before launch but denied any ongoing problems with their portions of the site. Read More »

Assessing The Exchanges

Yuval Levin | National Review Online | October 17, 2013

Over the last few days, I have spoken in some detail about the state of the federal Obamacare exchanges with several officials of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (the HHS agency that is running the exchanges), and with a number of reasonably well placed insurance company officials in Washington... Read More »

CGI Group Seen Rebounding From Obamacare Website Failure

Frederic Tomesco | Bloomberg | October 25, 2013

CGI Group Inc. (GIB/A) Chief Executive Officer Michael Roach told investors at a conference two weeks before the debut of the Obamacare website that the contract marked the start of a “long-term relationship” and a “significant growth opportunity.” Read More »

CMS Awarded Accenture No-Bid Contract On Healthcare.gov

Brian Kalish | Health Data Management | January 22, 2014

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services did not believe CGI Federal, its former Healthcare.gov contractor, could complete its work on the site in time, and thus selected Accenture as the new contractor with a no-bid $90 million-plus contract, according to documents. Read More »

CMS Awards Up-To-$15B Virtual Datacenter Contract

Mary Mosquera | Government Health IT | November 20, 2012

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has awarded a 10-year contract valued at up to $15 billion to eight vendors to compete to build various aspects of a virtual datacenter, which will provide the agency’s IT infrastructure and services that operate its business systems and better safeguard its healthcare information. Read More »

Coming Soon: Pentagon’s Multi-Billion Dollar Health Records Contract

Frank Konkei | Nextgov | April 25, 2014

Sometime in the coming months, the Defense Department will bid out its Healthcare Management Systems Modernization contract, an effort so large in monetary size and game-changing scope that it could significantly influence the future of health care in the United States.

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Consumers Abandoning Healthcare.gov

Stephen Landman | thepeoplesvoice.org | October 29, 2013

Can you blame them? According to Digital Trends (DT), "more than $500 million" was spent creating "the digital equivalent of a rock." DT's source is the General Accounting Office (GAO). Most spending went for contracts, saying... Read More »

Contractors Claim Healthcare.gov Didn't Have Enough Time

Anthony Brino | Government Health IT | October 24, 2013

The main contractors for Healthcare.gov were interrogated, scruntinzed, and criticized Thursday by members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, days after the Obama Administration called in a “fix it” team amid growing public frustration with the site’s problems. Read More »

Contractors Who Built Healthcare.gov Website Blame Each Other For All The Problems

Mike Masnick | Techdirt | October 24, 2013

With all the problems associated with the Healthcare.gov rollout, a bunch of fingers (including ours) pointed at the usual list of government contracting cronies who built the thing. The deal was done under an existing contract (so no open bidding) and involved the same "usual suspects" who have been connected to a number of other large government computer systems debacles... Read More »

Diagnosing the Online Health Exchange Debacle: "Proprietary" Software Needs a Dose of Open Source

Amy Goddman and Juan Gonzalez | Democracy Now | October 25, 2013

As the problem-plagued roll-out of President Obama’s signature healthcare policy undergoes congressional scrutiny for the first time, we speak with Clay Johnson, a former Obama campaign innovation expert who founded Blue State Digital, the company that built Obama’s 2008 website. During a House panel on Thursday, lawmakers questioned executives of two of the lead contractors behind the website, healthcare.gov — CGI Federal and Quality Software Systems Incorporated — about the myriad of glitches and defects. Johnson says the new website is built with outdated and proprietary software. "When the government is building software like this, it ought to be built out in the open — built with a licensing system called open source so that the public truly owns it," Johnson says. He notes that "In 1996, Congress lobotomized itself by getting rid of its technology think tank called the Technology Assessment Office. So they’re writing bills where they don’t understand the technology required in their laws."

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Err Engine Down

David Auerbach | Slate | October 8, 2013

Of all the terrible websites I’ve seen, healthcare.gov ranks somewhere in the middle. It has been difficult if not impossible to sign up, and customer service has been inadequate. [...]  So healthcare.gov’s failures are not uncommon—they’re just exceptionally high-profile. Read More »

Fighting The Next Obamacare Tech Fail

Dustin Volz and Sophie | Nextgov | January 16, 2014

In terminating CGI Federal's role in HealthCare.gov, President Obama finally "fired" one of the parties responsible for Obamacare's faulty website. That may appease the chorus of those calling on Obama to hold someone "accountable," but it does nothing to fix the underlying problem: the system for selecting contractors that picked CGI Federal in the first place. Read More »

From The Start, Signs Of Trouble At Health Portal

Robert Pear, Sharon LaFraniere and Ian Austen | New York Times | October 12, 2013

In March, Henry Chao, the chief digital architect for the Obama administration’s new online insurance marketplace, told industry executives that he was deeply worried about the Web site’s debut. “Let’s just make sure it’s not a third-world experience,” he told them. Read More »