Congressmen attack privatization plan

Web Posted: 05/25/2006 12:00 AM CDT

Guillermo X. Garcia
Express-News Staff Writer

Declaring it a failed experiment that is harming the neediest in the state, a group of Texas congressmen including Rep. Charlie Gonzalez, a San Antonio Democrat, urged state leaders Wednesday to immediately cease a plan to privatize the screening of welfare applications.

But Republican leaders, who control the Legislature and the top elected offices in the state, appeared unwilling to comply with the House Democrats' request.

Gov. Rick Perry's spokeswoman, Kathy Walt, did not directly address the congressional request, but noted that Perry has confidence in the privatizing effort and in Health and Human Services Commissioner Albert Hawkins, the point man for the outsourcing plan.

"The governor certainly believes that privatization is an appropriate cost-saving approach," Walt said.

Letting private companies carry out some state functions and providing those services faster, cheaper and more efficiently has been at the heart of the effort by the Health and Human Services Commission. Two years ago, the agency embarked on an ambitious plan to eventually replace face-to-face interviews between clients and state-paid caseworkers with forms that could be filled out via the Internet or with the assistance of private employees at four call centers around the state.

Texas signed an $899 million contract with Bermuda-based Accenture LLP last year to have the company develop an "integrated eligibility system" that would quickly and accurately determine the social services for which applicants qualify.

But the program has been beset with problems. The HHSC has twice postponed expanding the system outside of a small pilot project in Austin. The contractor's employee training program has been criticized, and a massive computer foul-up has resulted from an inability of various software programs to communicate with each other.

The program's critics say the foul-ups have led to people not receiving benefits they were entitled to. Others, they say, have been improperly denied benefits because of misinformation provided by poorly trained Accenture employees.

Acknowledging earlier this week that it has paid the contractor $91 million, Hawkins rejected an additional $50 million in payments for Accenture because the contractor has not been able to do the job.

The strongly worded letter was signed by four Texas Democratic congressmen and delivered late Wednesday to Perry, Hawkins and Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn.

Hawkins' spokeswoman said the commission planned to push ahead.

Strayhorn, a Republican running against Perry as an independent in November's gubernatorial election, applauded the congressmen "for getting involved in this Accenture mess."

"The governor implemented this plan in haste," Strayhorn said, terming the privatizing effort a "perfect story of wasted tax dollars, reduced access to services and profiteering at taxpayers' expense."

She has undertaken an audit and review of the Accenture contract and promised to provide answers to questions raised by state Democratic lawmakers who oppose privatization.

The state's privatizing effort "has been a total, complete failure, and the people who are losing are the needy and the taxpayers, and the people who are not (losing) are elected officials allowing this disaster to continue and the contractor," Gonzalez said in an interview.

Hawkins, who projected that the state would realize $646 million in savings over the five-year life of the contract, has twice been forced to postpone rolling out the effort statewide.

In addressing the problems, Hawkins also ordered that most of the work that Accenture was supposed to handle be instead performed by state workers, about 3,000 of whom were to have been replaced by the contractor's employees.

"People need to think in terms of the human suffering that is resulting from this truly failed effort," Gonzalez said.

ggarcia@express-news.net


From Blogger (some interesting links between Accenture and the current administration....)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/29/85414/3003
US Corporations & Elections Timeline:

2000 Halliburton & SAIC contract Accenture & Microsoft contract Paul S Cameron of Accenture becomes director at Seisint, Boca Raton Fla. Partnership with DBT Online Florida - Hank Asher DBT Inc. - ChoicePoint Inc. - Seisint Inc. [MATRIX & FACTS]Florida State - Katherine Harris - DBT & voter purge

2001 ACCENTURE gets $69m contract State of Florida [DBPR & STO] A $1bn deal between HALLIBURTON with ACCENTURE

2002 MATRIX $12m pilot project Florida State FDLE for ACCENTURE & SEISINT ENRON Lawsuits Settlements, liability for Accenture Ltd. Bermuda ends

2003 Cheney visit with Jeb Bush on SEISINT ACCENTURE buys election.com Pentagon SERVE project on e-Vote SEISINT's FACTSTM Report MATRIX Project - 18 months study FLORIDA IIR & FDLE $69m contract with SEISINT for FACTSTM -- Super computer and Data Base proprietary of SEISINT in Boca Raton, Fla.

2004 US Gov't DHS sign a $18bn contract with ACCENTURE for INS US-VISIT program ACCENTURE Ltd $2m contract in Florida to purge voter registration lists

http://www.cleanuptexaspolitics.com/node/view/479
State officials looking into how Accenture won huge Health and Human Services contract By Michelle M. MartinezState officials are looking into allegations that the company that last month was tentatively awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to run government-benefit call centers had received inside information.

Two legislators voiced their concern in a letter to the state's top health and human services official earlier this month, asking him to look into the possibility that an Accenture Ltd. employee obtained confidential, proprietary information about its competitor for the contract and that relationships involving current and former state employees could have helped its case.

Accenture and IBM Business Consulting Services were competing to build and manage computerized facilities that Texans could call to apply for or renew benefits such as Medicaid, food stamps and cash assistance.

On Wednesday, Albert Hawkins, executive commissioner of the state's health and human services agencies, said that he had asked the Office of Inspector General to investigate the evaluation process. He made the request Feb. 22, three days before his agency officially announced the tentative contract award to Accenture.

And the chairman of the House General Investigating and Ethics Committee, Rep. Kevin Bailey, D-Houston, said on Wednesday that his committee started looking into the matter late last week.

"I haven't gotten any firm information yet, but there have been allegations that they (Accenture) may have some friends in high places, and there's been some questions about whether they are competent to handle this kind of contract," Bailey said.

Peter Soh, an Accenture spokesman, said the accusationsoutlined in the letter by Rep. Dawnna Dukes, D-Austin, and Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston,"are without merit."

"We have no reason to believe that Accenture violated any laws or procurement rules in the preparation of our eligibility proposal," he said.IBM officials, who have filed a protest with the commission, declined to comment, citing the ongoing process.

Jennifer Harris, a spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Commission, said the value of the contract hasn't been finalized. Sources have put the price tag at a minimum of $1 billion.

The commission announced on Feb. 25 that it had tentatively selected Accenture for the job. The Bermuda-based company has clients around the world and an office in Austin.

Before a final decision is made, though, state officials will weigh whether the company could run the new eligibility system more efficiently than the state could.

A week after the announcement, IBM filed its protest with the agency. Harris said state officials could not release specifics of the protest because IBM had stamped it proprietary and confidential. The agency likely will request an opinion from the attorney general's office, she said.

"I think with the complexity and the size of a contract this large, and the significant overhaul that is being done with the eligibility system, it's not surprising that there are protests being made through our normal protest process," Harris said.

The same day they received IBM's protest, state officials received the letter by Dukes and Turner. Dukes said she received her information anonymously.

"It is our understanding that Accenture bragged to another vendor that they obtained copies of (IBM's) proprietary technical architecture for the . . . proposal, and that Accenture's Tim Overend shared the architecture with a vendor, commenting that others were retaining the information on their computers," the letter reads.

Overend declined to comment when reached at his office Wednesday.

The letter also states that:

* Hazel Baylor, a contractor for Accenture, was the commission's deputy commissioner for planning, evaluation and project management in 2004 and had specific knowledge about the request for proposals.

* Gary Gumbert, the commission's chief information officer, was hired within the past year from Maximus, which has partnered with Accenture on the project proposal.

* Anne Sapp, a commission employee who had attended confidential vendor presentations as part of the agency's proposal evaluation team, is Baylor's housemate.

Attempts to contact Baylor at Accenture were unsuccessful. Gumbert deferred to the commission's spokeswoman, and Sapp did not return a telephone call.

"To say that we are concerned about the apparent improprieties in the . . . process would be a gross understatement," Dukes and Turner wrote. "I expect you to provide answers to these questions and settle this matter immediately."

Hawkins said members of the team that evaluated the proposals were required to submit conflict-of-interest disclosures and sign nondisclosure forms."I am confident that our recent request for proposals for call centers included a strong review and evaluation process that resulted in a level playing field for all vendors," he said in the statement.

Rather than copy more articles, I am attaching links:

http://www.burntorangereport.com/archives/2004/08/scandal_after_s.html

http://www.corporatepolicy.org/topics/benedictarnolds1.htm

http://www.voteamericavote.com/nutshell.html

I found more but don't have time to post right now.