jonathanturley  January 27 2014

Bloomberg Made Last Minute Contract With Discredited Obamacare Company

I previously ran a column on how it seems that no waste or loss of government money seems enough to force accountability in some areas. That column came to mind with the recent disclosure that, in the waning hours of the Administration of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration, Montreal-based CGI was awarded a $10-million-plus contract to update the city’s non-emergency call system. That is the same company that was partially responsible for the massive failure of the Obamacare rollout and later denied renewal of its multimillion dollar contract.The company was paid roughly $100 million for the failed contract. That was just part of the $678 million spent on the Obamacare enrollment website at Healthcare.gov which is now the subject of additional contracts to fix the earlier contracts.

None of that appeared to deter the Bloomberg Administration to push through the contract with just hours left on its existence on December 31st. The Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications awarded the contract despite that fact that is now infamous in Washington, has a history of failures, and actually has little experience managing 311 call centers.

The start up contract will cost $10 million this year and will potentially cost tens of millions more in future years.

It appears however that a lack of experience and a history of massive failures was not viewed as a barrier to additional contracts by the Bloomberg Administration.