Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center

VA wasted $1.1 billion on failed IT projects in 6 years

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The Veterans Affairs Department wasted more than a billion dollars over six years attempting to upgrade its electronic health records system before scrapping the projects in June, according to a congressional watchdog.

Fifteen individual contractors received about two-thirds of the money spent during that period, and the remaining funds were distributed among 123 other firms. The VA has since announced plans to give one of those 15 major contractors, Cerner Corp., another crack at modernizing the agency’s health IT with a sole-source $10 billion contract to rebuild its medical record management platform.

The Government Accountability Office found that VA paid out roughly $1.1 billion between fiscal 2011 and 2016 to contractors working to update the agency’s outdated Veterans Information Systems and Technology Architecture system. The agency has relied on the platform to manage health records for its 9 million beneficiaries since the 1980s.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2017/12/va-wasted-11-billion-failed-it-projects-six-years/144425/

GSA creates Schedule SIN for health IT services

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Health Information Technology (IT) is one of the fastest-growing fields in the IT industry, in part due to a spurt of government technology modernization initiatives. After seeing skyrocketing demand across federal government agencies for the past several years, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) decided to prioritize Health IT as its own separate category within GSA Schedule 70 by establishing Health IT Special Item Number (SIN) 132-56.

The new SIN was officially established on August 1, 2016. It is the first SIN of its kind directly correlated to Health IT in compliance with the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR).

This new SIN category will give Health IT companies access to business with federal government agencies including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Defense Health Agency (a joint integrated Combat Support Agency that enables the U.S Army, U.S. Navy, and U.S. Air Force medical services to provide a medically ready force and ready medical force to Combatant Commands in both peacetime and wartime). As military and civilian healthcare reforms take effect, GSA expects these agencies’ demand to continue to grow.

Part of the justification for establishing a separate category is that Health IT is truly different — in that companies involved in the Health IT industry require very specific skillsets and have to comply with various healthcare security standards, including the Privacy Act of 1974, Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA).

Keep reading this article at: http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/gsa-has-created-a-separate-category-for-55952/

Where state and local governments are upping their procurement

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State and local government agencies saw the number of bids and RFPs for improved medical equipment grow 21 percent in 2016, more than any other contracting area, fueled by high health care costs and an aging boomer population.

According to the “10 Hotspots in Government Contracting for 2017” report released Thursday by Seattle-based business commercial intelligence company Onvia, medical equipment bids and requests for proposal increased from 1,491 in 2015 to 1,798 last year.

The medical equipment industry is worth $484 billion worldwide, and demand for new devices at public hospitals and health centers in the U.S. is meant to boost efficiency and prevention as patients capitalize on expanded access to insurance.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.routefifty.com/management/2017/02/stat-local-government-procurement/135681/

Schedule 70 adding sections for health IT, cybersecurity

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After the release of a special item number (SIN) for cloud products and services on IT Schedule 70, the General Services Administration is now looking to create two more SINs for targeted technologies, namely health IT and cybersecurity.

GSA logoThe Office of Integrated Technology Services (ITS) plans to issue a request for information in the next two weeks asking agencies and industry to comment on what needs to be included in a health IT SIN, according to Soundjata Carty, contracting officer at the ITS Office of IT Schedule Programs.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federaltimes.com/story/government/acquisition/gsa-gwac/2015/06/03/schedule-70-health-it-cyber/28411893/

Federal contractors now find opportunities for growth in healing, not war

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Two years ago General Dynamics, one of the biggest federal contractors, reported a quarterly loss of $2 billion. An “eye-watering” result, one analyst called it.

Diminishing wars and plunging defense spending had slashed the weapons maker’s revenue and left some subsidiaries worth far less than it had paid for them. But the company was already pushing in a new direction.

Soon after Congress passed the landmark Affordable Care Act, the maker of submarines and tanks decided to expand its business related to health care. Its 2011 purchase of health-data firm Vangent instantly made it the largest contractor to Medicare and Medicaid, the huge government health plans for seniors and the poor.

“They saw that their legacy defense market was going to be taking a hit,” said Sebastian Lagana, an analyst with Technology Business Research, a market research firm. “And they knew legislation was coming up that was going to inject funds into the health-care market.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/federal-contractors-now-find-opportunities-for-growth-in-healing-not-war/2014/12/04/3ed2ff08-7a63-11e4-9a27-6fdbc612bff8_story.html

Accenture to replace CGI as HealthCare.gov contractor

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The Obama administration has decided to jettison from HealthCare.gov the IT contractor,CGI Federal, that has been mainly 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 early next week a 12-month contract worth roughly $90 million 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, according to a person familiar with the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss private negotiations.

Accenture, one of the world’s largest consulting firms, has extensive experience with computer systems on the state level and built California’s large new health-insurance exchange. But it has not done substantial work on any Health and Human Services Department program.

The administration’s decision to end the contract with CGI reflects lingering unease over the performance of HealthCare.gov even as officials have touted recent improvements and the rising numbers of Americans who have used the marketplace to sign up for health coverage that took effect Jan. 1.

The government is able to sever its relationship with CGI readily because the company’s contract to work on the exchange is to run out at the end of February. Federal officials had the option of extending it for another year and possibly two more times, or of not renewing it. While rejecting a year’s extension, federal officials are discussing with company executives ways to try to ensure a smooth transition, according to individuals familiar with the conversations.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-administration-to-end-contract-with-cgi-federal-company-behind-healthcaregov/2014/01/10/001eb05a-719e-11e3-8b3f-b1666705ca3b_story.html

HealthCare.gov contract: Politics not a factor, but neither were firm’s ties to failed projects

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CGI Federal, the company responsible for building the problem-plagued Web site for the Affordable Care Act, won the job because of what federal officials deemed a “technically superior” proposal, according to government documents and people familiar with the decision.

Not considered in the 2011 selection process was the history of numerous executives at CGI Federal, who had come from another company that had mishandled at least 20 other government ­information technology projects more than a decade ago. But federal officials were not required to examine that long-term track record, which included a highly publicized failure to automate retirement benefits for millions of federal workers.

By 2011, CGI Federal already had been cleared to do government work at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency overseeing the rollout of the new health-care law.

The company had been included in a pool of pre-screened, approved contractors in 2007, during the George W. Bush administration, and only firms in that pool were later allowed to bid for the Affordable Care Act work. It was at that earlier time that the problems at American Management Systems, the Fairfax County IT contractor acquired by CGI, would have figured into the assessment of CGI Federal, contracting experts say.

In hindsight, one former CMS official said, the AMS record “could well have knocked [CGI Federal] out of the competition, and probably should have.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/healthcaregov-contract-politics-not-a-factor-but-neither-were-firms-ties-to-failed-projects/2013/12/22/61728fca-6753-11e3-a0b9-249bbb34602c_story.html

VA Awards health IT contract at triple the price of lower bids

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The Veterans Affairs Department awarded ASM Research a $162.5 million contract to improve the user experience for VA’s electronic health record system, a price more than triple two competitive bids, Nextgov has learned. The Sept. 30 contract award is for improvements to the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture, known as VistA.

HP Enterprise Services and Triple-I of Overland Park, Kansas, each submitted bids under $50 million on the contract won by ASM, two independent sources told Nextgov. The companies competed for the VistA work through task orders issued under a $12 billion IT umbrella contract known as Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology, or T4. The T4 contract, awarded to 16 companies in June 2011, is an indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract that gives the department considerable flexibility in awarding technology deals.

The VistA enhancement contract calls for a new graphical user interface that will display a wide range of patient information. It also calls for other tasks one source described as so general it would allow the department to use ASM for a wide range of work without further competition.

On Oct. 28, a month after VA awarded the contract to ASM, David Waltman, a senior program officer within the Veterans Health Administration’s Office of Information and Analytics who had done preliminary work on that contract, sent an email to colleagues at VA and the Defense Department telling them he would leave government service Nov. 2 to take a job as chief strategy officer for ASM.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/health/2013/11/va-awards-asm-research-health-it-contract-triple-price-competitors-bids/73223/

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