Obamacare debacle - website outsourced to Canada-based company CGI

 

This has gotten scant media coverage – the company that was awarded the Obamacare contract is a Montreal company, who has had previous failures in Canada.

 

Ironic that a Canadian company got the major portion of our tax money (gazillions) allocated for Obamacare website design, and failed.  But, we should be glad they are incompetent!

 

WASHINGTON, October 22, 2013 — Since the rollout on the first day of October of the Obamacare website, the information technology has been a disaster.

It was a system that the President claimed millions of people would go to in search of health insurance yet the website was unable to handle millions of users.

CGI Federal is the company that was the designated lead on creating and maintaining the website portal for the Affordable Care Act. By all accounts, CGI has failed to accomplish that task, despite having been paid $54 million to do so.

Some have started to question how and why a little known company was awarded such a high profile contract.

CGI is a Montreal headquartered information technology company founded in 1976 by two Canadians in their mid 20s, Serge Godin and Andre Imbeau.

Through a series of small company acquisitions they grew large enough to bid on and be awarded large contracts, including $1.4 billion in awards by the United States government.

In 2010, CGI purchased American military IT company Stanley, Inc. for $1.1 billion, which was the start of highly accelerated U.S. government contract work.

CGI previously worked on healthcare sites in Canada, although its results were questionable. According to the Washington Examiner, Ehealth, Canada’s medical agency, ultimately eliminated its medical registry for diabetics in the nation after CGI became 14 months behind schedule and missed three years of deadlines.

The IT company’s $46.2 million contract was cancelled by Ehealth on September 5, 2012…

Read more: http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/political-potpourri/2013/oct/22/cgi-company-behind-failed-obamacare-website/#ixzz2ilYrFCaC

Whacko Birds? Damn Few

I couldn’t resist…this American Thinker article by friend Sally is too good not to be disseminated. 

October 2, 2013.

By Sally Zelikovsky

Holy Much Ado About Nothing, Batman, the government has shut down! Wham! Pow! Splat!

But the reality is, the roller coaster ride America has been on for the last few months is finally over and, so far, we aren't picking up the Republican bodies everyone said would be thrown from the ride.

No doubt the Democrats will make mincemeat out of the Republicans and we will continue to be blamed for everything -- not negotiating, not agreeing to conferences, single-handedly closing down the government, creating more unemployment and misery for the 800,000+ federal employees -- blah, blah, blah. Color me jaded, but there's nothing new there. And the president is already out lambasting Republicans in so obvious a partisan manner that it will not resonate well with the Indies -- they aren't gullible like the Dem party diehards.

But there is a greater point here I'd like to make: It seems most commentators on the tube or internet and many members of Congress have missed the key reason why so many grassroots conservatives, members of the Republican base and Tea Partiers supported this crazy, whacko, doomed-to-fail, extreme, hostage-holding stance to defund ObamaCare -- from conservative icons like Karl Rove and Charles Krauthammer to turncoats like Peter King, John McCain, and Lindsay Graham who endlessly brayed in opposition to the defunding efforts.

"Turncoats" is admittedly a harsh term but when was the last time you saw an entire faction of House or Senate Democrats publicly express their disagreement with fellow Democrats for a stand they took, like supporting Occupy Wall Street? Or a piece of legislation they proposed, like ObamaCare? When was the last time you heard any Democrat verbally and very publicly abuse their fellow blue coats calling them suicidal or whacko birds? Ever hear Harry Reid criticize Nancy Pelosi or Al Franken hurl invectives at Steny Hoyer? When will Republicans learn that you don't air your dirty laundry and you never speak ill of a fellow Republican -- even if it benefits you personally, politically, or financially.

It's enough we have to deal with Dan Pfeiffer referring to us as suicide bombers, Harry Reid implying we are insane, and the president refusing to negotiate with us as if we were terrorists and he was channeling Reagan. We don't need our own to feed fuel into the Democrat-controlled fire. Maybe we are insane because we keep making this mistake over and over. Turncoats like McCain, King, and Graham should have remained silent if they couldn't genuinely agree and, instead, expressed their disagreement and alternatives behind the scenes without adding to the clutter of personal insults launched by the Democrats…

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/10/whacko_birds_damn_few.html#ixzz2gbSko2KK