From the Washington Post‘s Juliet Eilperin and Amy Goldstein, here’s a piece of news that comes way too late to placate the haters:
The Obama administration has decided to jettison CGI Federal, the main IT contractor that was responsible for building the defect-ridden online health insurance marketplace and has been immersed in the work of repairing it.
Federal health officials are preparing to sign a 12-month contract worth roughly $90 million, probably early next week, with a different company, Accenture, after concluding that CGI has not been effective enough in fixing the intricate computer system underpinning the federal Web site, HealthCare.gov.
Republicans have made a big deal of saying that nobody’s been fired for the Obamacare site snafus of last year, but it’s not that easy to end a relationship with a contractor. These things take time. And if Accenture manages to make the Obamacare site run efficiently, nobody will remember this issue by the time the midterm elections roll around this November.
I love when people in government are fired, as opposed to “accepting their resignation” or “put on administrative leave.” I even enjoyed it from Chris Christie, despite the fact that it might have been helpful to ask first why the hell they shut down a bridge, assuming he didn’t know.