Millions of dollars each year in enhanced funding bonuses from the Federal government for the State of Texas - GONE!

Millions of dollars invested in a new computer system that was going to make it easier for clients to apply for and receive benefits - GONE

Tenured, well-trained caseworkers with personal and professional knowledge of cients - poor, needy, elderly, disabled, desperate, even fraudelent clients - GONE

The list can go on, but basically, the point is clear.

I am plagiarizing this statement but it is so true: Texas has the best government that money can buy.

Our Texas legislators voted in HB 2292 in 2003. They did NOT read what they were voting for. HH2292 consolidated numerous State agencies under the head of Albert Hawkins, who just happened to have been George W.'s:

January 28, 2004 By New Release

Previously, Hawkins was assistant to President George W. Bush and secretary to the Cabinet. Before that he was the director of Gov. George W. Bush's Office of Budget and Planning. He also served as deputy director of the Texas Legislative Budget Board.

http://www.govtech.net/news/news.php?id=86360&mail=1

I could provide alot more links to show just how long we've been trying to tell you people that this just won't work the way HHSC plans. The bad thing is, they don't care....the heads at HHSC don't care, the general public doesn't care ("after all, it's just a bunch of welfare bums..."), and the clients themselves don't have a clue, although they are now getting a taste of it. I have yet to hear of a successful interaction with TAA (contracted by the State to provide services to clients), who just happens to be Accenture who just happened to be Arthur Anderson (remember ENRON?).




http://www.offthekuff.com/movable_type/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=5148

http://www.offthekuff.com/mt/archives/005027.html

http://www.cwa-tseu.org/hb2292_callcenterstatement.html

Some of the links below are quite old, but as stated above, some of us have been trying to get the news out for quite some time now.

Enjoy your reading.

http://theredstate.typepad.com/texas/2005/01/how_to_profit_f.html

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2005-12-30/pols_naked11.html

http://muse-musings.blogspot.com/2006/04/fixing-chip.html

http://sammalmaguer.blogspot.com/2006/01/tseu-broadcast.html

http://www.cbronline.com/article_news_print.asp?guid=77B82BC0-4AAC-4736-8461-F372960874E5

IBM sues to stop Texas deal with Accenture
22nd March 2005

By CBR Staff Writer

IBM has filed a lawsuit challenging the award of a major IT and business process outsourcing services contract by the State of Texas to its rival Accenture. The suit alleges that there were irregularities in the way that HHSC chose Accenture, but at the time of writing, neither IBM nor Accenture had responded to requests for comment.

IBM is putting legal pressure on Texas' Health and Human Services Commission to reconsider its decision to make Accenture the preferred vendor for processing applications for Medicaid and other social security benefits. The award, made on February 25th 2005, has not been finalized and HHSC state that it is dependent upon final negotiations with Accenture.

IT services companies are increasingly looking to lawyers to challenge government decisions over major contracts. In February 2005, EDS bowed to pressure from the courts and agreed to stop performing any further work on its $860m IT services contract for the HUD (Housing and Urban Development Department), after rival Lockheed filed a lawsuit with the Court of Federal Claims to stop it transferring any more staff to EDS as a result of the deal, which the General Accounting Office ruled in December 2004 had been unfairly handed out.

The GAO discovered that mistakes had been made when it evaluated the two new bids from EDS and Lockheed at the renewal and asserted that Lockheed had put in a more competitive bid than EDS.

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For now, those caseworkers still left are working under enormous pressures, giving up alot of our own personal time to try to keep the system that our legislatures dismantled working!