The government contract for the company that built the glitch-prone website for Obamacare has ballooned to three times its original cost
The U.S. arm of a Canadian company, CGI, had the biggest role of the many contractors that worked on the rollout. It won the contract in October 2011.
At the time, it had an estimated cost of up to $94 million.
By May of this year, that cost ceiling had swelled to $292 million.
The government says that the cost grew as more states lined up for Obamacare, President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.
CGI has declined comment to NBC News for weeks on the troubled rollout.
A General Accounting Office report lists it as the largest contractor supporting exchanges for Obamacare, with $88 million paid through March 31.
USA Today, citing technology experts, reported that the site was built using 10-year-old technology and may require constant fixes for the next six months and eventually an overhaul of the whole system.
Luke Chung, who owns a software and database programming company, told NBC News that the problems are serious.
“It doesn’t work,” he said. “It’s supposed to get you a quote. It doesn’t do that.”
If it were his own product, he said, “I’d be embarrassed and I’d use language with my development team that couldn’t be on the air. This is ridiculous.”
Last June, a GAO report foreshadowed those problems, warning that the website might not be ready to go live.
The government’s record of poorly designed websites and botched IT is well-known in the tech world. In 2009, one of the government’s own sites, Next.gov, engaged readers in a debate: “Why are federal websites so bad?”
The Census Bureau’s effort to replace clipboards and paper with handheld data collection devices for the 2010 count hit a $2 million overrun. Harris Corp. was the contractor originally awarded a $6 million contract to develop the devices and support software. “Significant miscommunication” and “lack of clarity” were cited in 2008 testimony before the GAO.
And over roughly the past year, a $1.4 billion data center in Utah for storing and analyzing surveillance data collected by the National Security Agency suffered 10 equipment-destroying “meltdowns” due to “chronic electrical surges,” The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month. The paper, citing documents and interviews, blamed corner-cutting.
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