Obamacare Fisasco: Canadian IT Company CGI Hired and Totally FUBARs Everything

[JimBowie1958]

How did these clowns get hired by a DEMOCRAT President to roll out Obamacare? How did the federal government FAIL to stress test the system before deploying it? IS this what we can all expect from future administration of the catastrophe called Obamacare?

Do you trust these fools to take care of your parents or grandparents or injured loved ones in the near future?

Then read these articles:

"How the government spent $634MILLION on the Obamacare website - more than it cost to build Facebook and Twitter - and it STILL doesn't work"
Obamacare website cost $634MILLION and it still doesn't work | Mail Online


Analysis: IT experts question architecture of Obamacare website | Reuters

"Five outside technology experts interviewed by Reuters, however, say they believe flaws in system architecture, not traffic alone, contributed to the problems.

For instance, when a user tries to create an account on HealthCare.gov, which serves insurance exchanges in 36 states, it prompts the computer to load an unusually large amount of files and software, overwhelming the browser, experts said.

If they are right, then just bringing more servers online, as officials say they are doing, will not fix the site.

"Adding capacity sounds great until you realize that if you didn't design it right that won't help," said Bill Curtis, chief scientist at CAST, a software quality analysis firm, and director of the Consortium for IT Software Quality. "The architecture of the software may limit how much you can add on to it. I suspect they'll have to reconfigure a lot of it."

The online exchanges were launched on October 1 under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare, to offer healthcare insurance plans to millions of uninsured Americans.

OVERLOADED

One possible cause of the problems is that hitting "apply" on HealthCare.gov causes 92 separate files, plug-ins and other mammoth swarms of data to stream between the user's computer and the servers powering the government website, said Matthew Hancock, an independent expert in website design. He was able to track the files being requested through a feature in the Firefox browser.

Of the 92 he found, 56 were JavaScript files, including plug-ins that make it easier for code to work on multiple browsers (such as Microsoft Corp's Internet Explorer and Google Inc's Chrome) and let users upload files to HealthCare.gov.

It is not clear why the upload function was included.

"They set up the website in such a way that too many requests to the server arrived at the same time," Hancock said.

He said because so much traffic was going back and forth between the users' computers and the server hosting the government website, it was as if the system was attacking itself.

Hancock described the situation as similar to what happens when hackers conduct a distributed denial of service, or DDOS, attack on a website: they get large numbers of computers to simultaneously request information from the server that runs a website, overwhelming it and causing it to crash or otherwise stumble. "The site basically DDOS'd itself," he said."

 

[JimBowie1958]

Canadian IT firm at centre of Obamacare foul-up furor - The Globe and Mail

"The piece emphasized CGI’s work in Canadian health care, describing it as “deeply embedded in Canada’s single-payer system” – a system that American conservatives find objectionable.

Analysts who follow CGI said the initial issues with the Obamacare roll-out aren’t a major source of concern. “It is unfortunate that we are seeing headlines where things are breaking down and CGI’s name is attached to it,” said Justin Kew, a software analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald. “They’ve done enough work in these verticals that they’ll get it right eventually.”....(me:bullshit, this is not getting fixed for months)....

For CGI, health care reform in the U.S. is a major business opportunity. The firm is the main contractor on not just the federal marketplace, but also nine state platforms where Americans can shop for insurance. The IT services giant saw its revenues from health care grow 90 per cent from a year earlier thanks to the impact of policy changes in the U.S., Michael Roach, CGI’s chief executive officer, said during its most recent quarterly earnings conference call in July.

Providing services to the U.S. federal government represents a “big market,” Mr. Roach said. “A big market means big opportunities for those that are focused and for those that are hungry, and we’re both.”

Mr. Roach said he expected the firm’s business in U.S. health care to grow as more states set up their own exchanges or expand the ones already in place.

However, the company has run into friction with one of its state customers. CGI missed half of its performance deadlines in a contract with the state of Vermont, according to a report on a local news website last month."

So, the Obama administration has hired as the primary contractor a CANADIAN company whose primary source of income is running a socialized medical care system in Canada...wouldn't that give them an incentive to FAIL in this Obamacare rollout so that it can then be the primary in a socialized 'single payer' system here in the USA?

 

[JimBowie1958]

Analysis: IT experts question architecture of Obamacare website | Reuters

"At this point I can only speculate on the total cost to build out Healthcare.gov and the overall technology portion of the FFEs. Based on the available data, however, a conservative estimate puts the cost so far at over $500 million. Considering the GAO estimates it will cost approximately $2 billion to build-out and operate the FFEs in 2014, this is, if anything, likely far too low."

 

[boedicca]

And just think how much more money will be spent to fix this clusterfuck.

It's also telling that CGI's contract with Ontario was terminated due to performance issues.

CGI Federal’s parent company, Montreal-based CGI Group, was officially terminated in September 2012 by an 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.

Canadian officials fired IT firm behind troubled Obamacare website | WashingtonExaminer.com


And yet, our Gubmint proceeded full steam ahead to pay them huge cost overruns for this mess.

 

[JimBowie1958]

The PJ Tatler » Obamacare Web Site ?Basically DDOS?ed Itself?

Tech experts tend to say that 404Care’s problems are fundamental and not the result of any traffic “crush.” That traffic “crush, by the way, was not extraordinary. Drudge handles more traffic in one day than Healthcare.gov handled all of last week.

For instance, when a user tries to create an account on HealthCare.gov, which serves insurance exchanges in 36 states, it prompts the computer to load an unusually large amount of files and software, overwhelming the browser, experts said.

If they are right, then just bringing more servers online, as officials say they are doing, will not fix the site.

Right. It won’t.

It looks like they built the site, very poorly, but never put it through any real-world stress tests at all. Which is pretty stupid.

Hancock described the situation as similar to what happens when hackers conduct a distributed denial of service, or DDOS, attack on a website: they get large numbers of computers to simultaneously request information from the server that runs a website, overwhelming it and causing it to crash or otherwise stumble. “The site basically DDOS’d itself,” he said.

That’s quite an achievement.

 

[JimBowie1958]

CBS News: The $634 MILLION dollar Obamacare website ?needs a COMPLETE overhaul? » The Right Scoop -

CBS News not only says it was ‘nothing short of disastrous’, but interviewed a computer database software expert who said he would be embarrassed had his company rolled out something like this. He said it’s not demand that’s killing the website, but rather it wasn’t designed well and looks like it wasn’t even beta tested.

Lol, yeah, just the people I would trust my parents care to...if I hated them.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Obamacare's broken website cost more than LinkedIn, Spotify combined | Digital Trends

But based on the figures and details available, here is my best estimate of what this flawed system has cost us: The most clear data comes from a U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report from June (pdf), which states that the U.S. Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) spent “almost $394 million from fiscal year 2010 through March 2013 through contracts” to build the “federally facilitated exchanges” (FFEs) – the complex system that includes Healthcare.gov as well as certain state-based exchanges – the data hub, and other expenditures related to the Obamacare exchange system. While GAO states that the “highest volume” of that $394 million was related to the development of “information technology systems,” a more detailed look at that cost shows that a portion that $394 million was spent on things like call centers and collection services. Take that out, and you’re left with roughly $363 million spent on technology-related costs to the healthcare exchanges – the bulk of which ($88 million) went to CGI Federal, the company awarded a $93.7 million contract to build Healthcare.gov and other technology portions of the FFEs.

That’s already a hell of a lot of money, but that does not account for all costs accrued for this project. As the GAO states, the $392 million figure does “not include CMS salaries and other administrative costs” associated with the Obamacare exchanges. In other words, the actual cost for the development and implementation of the total Obamacare exchange system is far higher. We’ve reached out to CMS for an exact figure, but thanks to the government shutdown, we have yet to hear from them on this matter. However, we do know, according to CMS’s 2014 budget request (pdf), that agency spent more than $150 million in 2012 and 2013 in relation to the Affordable Care Act – a lowball figure considering that, in its 2013 budget request (pdf), the agency asked for more than $1 billion in additional funds “needed to support operation infrastructure” and open-enrollment preparations of the FFEs.

At this point I can only speculate on the total cost to build out Healthcare.gov and the overall technology portion of the FFEs. Based on the available data, however, a conservative estimate puts the cost so far at over $500 million. Considering the GAO estimates it will cost approximately $2 billion to build-out and operate the FFEs in 2014, this is, if anything, likely far too low.

Wasn't Obamacare supposed to SAVE us money?

Now its looking like it might have been set up to fail by hiring a company that makes its money off of nationalized health care systems...like hiring the fox to guard the hen house.

 

[depotoo]

can someone tell me why it seems to be acceptable that this administration hired a Canadian company for this rather than American? And sent $634 million of our money abroad?

 

[JimBowie1958]

can someone tell me why it seems to be acceptable that this administration hired a Canadian company for this rather than American? And sent $634 million of our money abroad?

Well the Democrats would defend Obama even if he sent millions of Americans to FEMA camps and had them all starved to death.

RINOS just want to get elected and that means corporate donations and that means not ever criticizing out-sourcing.

Real Americans get pissed off about this crap.

 

[Crackerjaxon]

I could've put that site together for six figures.

Talk about a boondoggle.

 

[JimBowie1958]

I could've put that site together for six figures.

Talk about a boondoggle.

And they will be running our nations health care system; warm fuzzies all around I guess.