Tag: CGI Federal

Sibelius, Shenanigans, and CGI

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

SibeliusAs Kathleen Sibelius prepares to testify at today’s Congressional Hearing, word has gotten out that she plans to blame the horrible roll-out of the President’s Signature Legislation, Obamacare, on CGI Federal, the Canadian Firm who designed the horrendous technical disaster of a website, known as Healthcare.gov.

I was going to advise the clueless Secretary of HHS to tread lightly, but I changed my mind:

Let it all hang out, Kathy-Baby.

As I reported back on October 19th, the awarding of a no-bid contract to CGI Federal was the result of political shenanigans.

Allow me to introduce you to Mr. George Schindler…

Mr. George D. Schindler has been the President of United States and Canada at CGI Group Inc. since January 2013 and served as the President U.S. Operations since October 2011. As a member of CGI’s Management Committee, Mr. Schindler also participates in the development and execution of CGI’s global strategy. Mr. Schindler served as the President of Stanley, Inc. since August 2010. Mr. Schindler served as the President of CGI Federal Inc. from 2006 to October 1, 2011, where he led CGI’s business with the Civilian, Defense, and Intelligence Sectors of the U.S. government. Under his leadership, CGI Federal was named the 2010 Greater Washington U.S. Government Contractor of the Year (greater than $300 million) by the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce, PSC and Washington Technology. CGI was also named one of the “9 Hot Companies to Watch” by Federal Computer Week.

In August 2012, Schindler donated $1,000 to Obama’s Re-Election Campaign,according to opensecrets.org. However, by then, his company had already secured the contract to build the website.

That donation was made at the very same time that a bunch of business leaders, including Schindler, met with the president at the White House, to talk about “insourcing”, a pleasant little term which the Administration made up to describe their pleading with American Corporations not to move their assets out of the country to get away from all the taxes that the same Obama Administration was penalizing them with.

Informationweek.com reported at the time that…

“You’ve heard of outsourcing. Well, these companies are insourcing,” the president said. “That’s exactly the kind of commitment to country that we need–especially right now, when we’re in a make-or-break moment for the middle class and those aspiring to get to the middle class here in the United States.”

Obama added: “When a lot of folks are still looking for work, now is the time for us to step on the gas.” And while he gave a nod to what he said were the “the bottom line” benefits of sourcing domestically, Obama asserted “a moral case” for insourcing.

Great sound bites, especially in a political season where attention is focused on 99 percenters, Occupy protesters, and general class warfare. But here’s the reality: There’s no broad trend toward insourcing, but there is a recognition that the pressure to cut costs over the past decade led many companies to push the envelope on offshoring a bit too far, and that it’s time for some rebalancing.

…CGI Group is a midsize tech services company based in Quebec, with offices in more than 40 U.S. locations as well as centers in Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Mumbai, India. CGI employs roughly 10,000 workers in the U.S. and 20,000 elsewhere.

Of late, the company has been opening development centers in small U.S. towns such as Belton, Texas, Lebanon, Va., and Troy, Ala. CGI U.S. president George Schindler, who attended Obama’s insourcing summit, told me that such locales are becoming more cost competitive with India and offer a pool of untapped IT talent that can add some geographic balance to CGI’s workforce.

“These are areas that have been harder hit by the downturn than others, but they offer a set of dynamics that are working in our favor,” Schindler told me following his visit to the White House. “They offer a great cost of living, they are motivated from a local government perspective, and there’s partnerships with community colleges that can train people in the skills we need. It makes an attractive cost case, whereas the opposite is happening in some other parts of the world.”

As for creating jobs in the U.S., Schindler says it’s great to be able to contribute to local communities. “But it’s business first–the economics have to be there,” he says.

Since I reported on the president’s connection to CGI Federal, it has come out that the First Lady, not-so-affectionately known to average Americans as “Mooch”, has ties to CGI Federal, as well.

Fox News reports that

Toni Townes-Whitley, a senior vice president at CGI Federal, is also a Princeton University classmate of first lady Michelle Obama — and a political donor.

Mike Caddell, a spokesman for Princeton University, confirmed to FoxNews.com that Townes-Whitley went to the school and graduated in 1985. According to a Princeton alumni publication in 1998, Townes-Whitley also volunteered for the Peace Corps and was stationed in West Africa. She raised six children before returning to work.

Both Townes-Whitley and Michelle Obama are members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni.

According to Federal Election Commission Records, Townes-Whitley gave $500 in 2011 and 2012 to Obama’s reelection campaign, and another $1,000 to the Obama Victory Fund.

Shenanigans aside, what was CGI’s reputation before Obama hired them?

According to a website, out of Fairfax County, VA,fairfaxunderground.com…

Canadian provincial health officials last year fired the parent company of CGI Federal, the prime contractor for the problem-plagued Obamacare health exchange websites, the Washington Examiner has learned.

CGI Federal’s parent company, Montreal-based CGI Group, was officially terminated in September 2012 by a Ontario government health agency after the firm missed three years of deadlines and failed to deliver the province’s flagship online medical registry.

The online registry was supposed to be up and running by June 2011.

The CMS officials refused to say if federal officials knew of its parent company’s IT failure in Canada when awarding the six contracts.

It wasn’t just those contracts. As mentioned earlier, Obama dumped huge amounts of money on CGI.

CGI Federal is a subsidiary of Montreal-based CGI Group. With offices in Fairfax, Va., the subsidiary has been a darling of the Obama administration, which since 2009 has bestowed it with $1.4 billion in federal contracts, according to USAspending.gov.

HHS is by far the single largest federal contractor of CGI, showering it with $645 million in contracts. The Defense Department pays the Canadian company $254 million, the EPA $58 million and the Justice Department $36 million.

In comparison, in 2008, under President George W. Bush, CGI contracts totaled only $16.5 million for all federal departments and agencies.

The interesting question is why Obama dumped 1.4 billion in taxpayer money on a company this incompetent and ignored all the warnings.

It’s one more thing that ought to be investigated.

Well, heck, there is no time like the present, for a good investigation.

So, today, I hope Secretary Sibelius throws the entire Administration under the bus. 

She would be well-advised to land the first punch.  Heck, she might as well walk into the hearings wearing a baseball cap with the word “SCAPEGOAT” written across the front of it.

Because, it any heads are going to roll of the failure of Obamacare, her’s will be the first to hit the floor.

Certainly, you don’t believe that “the smartest guy in the room” is going to accept any responsibility for this Legislative Train Wreck, do you?

Being Obama means never having to say you’re sorry.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obama’s Website Speech: Would You Buy a Used Car From This Man?

On By kingsjesterIn Politics10 Comments

Obama-Used-Car-salesmanYesterday Morning, the 44th President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, walked out into the Rose Garden, surrounded by Human Props, and made what was essentially a Campaign Speech, in a desperate attempt to save face, after the humiliation of the biggest failure to launch since the Rosie O’Donnell Variety Hour:

Over the past two and a half weeks, millions of Americans visited HealthCare.gov to look at their new health care options under the Affordable Care Act. In that time, nearly half a million applications for coverage have been submitted from across the nation. This tremendous interest – with over 19 million unique visits to date to HealthCare.gov– confirms that the American people are looking for quality, affordable health coverage, and want to find it online.

Unfortunately, the experience on HealthCare.gov has been frustrating for many Americans. Some have had trouble creating accounts and logging in to the site, while others have received confusing error messages, or had to wait for slow page loads or forms that failed to respond in a timely fashion. The initial consumer experience of HealthCare.gov has not lived up to the expectations of the American people. We are committed to doing better.

Aside from the difficulties since launching the site, there are parts of the overall system that have proved up to the task. The “Data Hub,” component, which provides HealthCare.gov with information that aids in determining eligibility for qualified health plans, is working. Individuals have been able to verify their eligibility for credits, enabling them to shop for and enroll in low or even no-cost health plans.

Since launch, when we first recognized these issues, we have been working around the clock to make improvements.We have updated the site several times with new code that includes bug fixes that have greatly improved the HealthCare.gov experience. The initial wave of interest stressed the account service, resulting in many consumers experiencing trouble signing up, while those that were able to sign up sometimes had problems logging in.

In response, we have made a number of improvements to the account service. Initially, we implemented a virtual “waiting room,” but many found this experience to be confusing. We continued to add more capacity in order to meet demand and execute software fixes to address the sign up and log in issues, stabilizing those parts of the service and allowing us to remove the virtual “waiting room.” Today, more and more individuals are successfully creating accounts, logging in, and moving on to apply for coverage and shop for plans. We’re proud of these quick improvements, but we know there’s still more work to be done. We will continue to conduct regular maintenance nearly every night to improve the experience.

To ensure that we make swift progress, and that the consumer experience continues to improve, our team has called in additional help to solve some of the more complex technical issues we are encountering.

I am surprised that the Cheesey Preezy didn’t try to work in the statement,

Can you hear me now?

According to USA Today…

An informed source in the telecommunications industry said Verizon’s Enterprise Solutions division has been asked by the Department of Health and Human Services to improve the performance of the HealthCare.gov site, which is a key component of the Affordable Care Act. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement had not been made official.

…It makes sense for HHS to seek Verizon’s help, said Aneesh Chopra, the Obama administration’s former chief technology officer and now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “There is an existing ‘best and brightest’ available to call in,” Chopra said. “Verizon is one of those already under contract.”

The odds that the problem will be fixed are “50-50,” said Clark Kelso, California’s chief information officer under governors Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. “They’ve got a short window here to try to fix things,” Kelso said. “Simply throwing a lot of new programmers at something like this does not guarantee success.”

It makes even more sense, if you do a little research, like I did.

Per opensecrets.org, Verizon’s biggest Political Contribution in the 2012 election was to…you guessed it…the Re-election Campaign of Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm). Verizon contributed $223,741.

Can you say “rewarding your friends”, boys and girls? Sure you can.

Back in 1980, a movie came out, which has since become a cult favorite. Its title was “Used Cars”. It starred Kurt Russell as a sleazy Used Car Salesman named Rudy Russo, who would do or say anything he had to, in order to make a sale.

Rudy’s favorite line, when making a sale,or devising a scheme, was

Trust me.

That movie, and the character of Rudy Russo, reminded me of Obama and his speech, yesterday,

Obama’s desperate. His Signature Legislation, the misnamed “Affordable Care Act”, passed in the dark of night by his Congressional Minions, is circling down the ol’ porcelain receptacle at an ever-accelerating rate.

In fact, it has already been declared a disaster by a lot of objective experts, including Consumer Reports…

On October 1, the day the Obamacare exchanges went online, the magazine told people to be patient: “Don’t worry if you can’t sign up today or even within the next couple of weeks.” A week into enrollment, they urged again to “wait a couple weeks and hope that the site irons out its many problems” because the HealthCare.gov is “barely operational.”

As the editors continued to review the website over the next few days, they only had one positive statement: “On the plus side,” they noted, “consumers coming to HealthCare.gov are no longer stopped cold by an error message or a screen saying they’ve been put in a waiting line.”

Now three weeks into the exchanges, having offered reviews and advice, Consumer Reports said that “if all [these suggestions] are too much to absorb, follow our previous advice: Stay away from Healthcare.gov,” at least for the time being.

Good Advice.  As I reported the other day, the designers of the website, CGI Federal, Obama Donors in their own right, were fired for poor performance by Canadian Health Officials, before being given the contract for Healthcare.gov by Obama.

Now, Obama is calling upon another major donor, Verizon, to fix the “tore up from the floor up” website.

Evidently, the corruption and cronyism which Obama surrounds himself with, just like the character Rudy Russo, from “Used Cars” are just the way ol’ Scooter rolls. Except, in the movie, Rudy actually turned out to have some redeeming qualities.

In 2007, Biden said that Obama was “story book”. He is: Pinocchio. But, instead of his nose growing when he lies, our National Debt does. And, his Political Patrons get richer.

Until He Comes, 

KJ