FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FROM TEXAS STATE EMPLOYEES UNION
July 18, 2006 CONTACT WILL ROGERS@ 512/448-4225 OR wrogers@cwa-tseu.org

Ample reasons to fire Accenture
Austin-The Texas State Employees Union today said that failure by Accenture to carry out terms of its call center contract with the state Health and Human Service Commission provides ample grounds for canceling the contract.

"Accenture, for example, was supposed to train call center staff to process applications for services and to have integrated key software components that were essential to making the call centers work, but it failed to do either," Gross said. "These failures and others caused thousands of people to not get services or to experience unacceptable service delays."

The Austin American Statesman reported today that an HHSC attorney said that he couldn't find "anything that I've seen that represents something that in my opinion would require termination."

TSEU conducted a quick review of one portion of one section of the contract and found two serious breaches.

According to Section 10.03 (A), Accenture prior to implementation of call center pilot was supposed to have trained Texas Access Alliance (the call center subcontractors) personnel, but either didn't do so or did a very poor job.

Since the call centers have been put on hiatus, call center staff have been sent to local state eligibility offices for on-the-job training. Essentially, HHSC is now doing what it contracted with Accenture to do.

According to Section 10.03 (B), Accenture prior to implementation of the pilot was to have completed "integration of TIERS and MAXe3," two software applications whose integration was supposed to have made it possible for information gathered at the call centers to be seamlessly transferred to HHSC computers.

However, this integration is still not complete, and failure to complete this integration caused delays in providing services to people in need and in some cases caused eligible applicants to not receive services.

"We found these two major violation of the contract after a cursory review of just one small section of the contract" Gross said. "I'm sure this is just the tip of the iceberg."

Gross reiterated that TSEU supports the call made last week by a bi-partisan group of 60 state House members to cancel the Accenture contract and to use the money earmarked for it to rebuild the state's health and human services delivery capacity, which has atrophied since HHSC decided to privatize eligibility services.

To date, HHSC has paid Accenture more than $100 million even though the company has been unable to deliver the services stipulated in the contract that it signed last summer.