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California Health Care exchange cost $360 Million to build/maintain

• ck2 13y ago
  $183 million for initial development - this is TWICE what the national system was given Holy cow. And they teamed up with CGI
  • hga 13y ago
    But not what it used to get to the official launch. The figures are reliably available, and I remember $92 million initially for the web site, and real close to $300 million at last count. In one way, this doesn't sound excessive: the California site cost almost certainly includes integration, which the Federal CMMS disastrously took upon themselves to do, it probably includes backend work not in the Fed's CGI Federal website contract, and while the site is not one of the four reported to be working really well, we're not hearing Federal level horror stories about it. On the other hand, having various states do their own sure sounds like an unreasonable amount of duplication. How does it make sense, except to fatten the coffers of contractors (cui bono), since the whole system fails hard if the Fed's site fails? Which among other things does subsidy calculations for all, and we'd hope would compartmentalize access to sensitive entities like the IRS. I can't see us reasonably blaming CGI, especially if it's CGI Federal, for any of this mess (disclaimer, I briefly worked for AMS just before CGI bought the part I wasn't working for) . No team of programmers can win if they're getting constant change orders,right through the week before launch. And that's the most obvious of signs that the people managing them didn't have the right stuff.