The company behind BC Hydro’s customer-facing website, which crashed during the severe windstorm that whipped Metro Vancouver on August 29, is a corporate sibling of the company blamed for the botched launch of the “ObamaCare” website in October 2013, Business in Vancouver has learned.
BCHydro.com was not restored until August 31. Hydro blamed the website crash on heavy traffic as thousands of people in Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley tried to check the website’s list and map of power outages.
It took until 10 p.m. on August 29 for BC Hydro to issue a list to media of power outages via a Twitter link. More than half-a-million residences and businesses lost power during the storm.
BC Hydro paid CGI Information Systems and Management Consultants $2.9 million for the year ended March 31, 2014, according to the Crown corporation’s financials.
BC Hydro spokeswoman Simi Heer said CGI was awarded a three-year contract for “the sustainment work of BC Hydro’s websites” that was signed in May 2013. BC Hydro chose CGI over November 2012 bids from Sierra Systems Group, Horus Transformation Services Group and Capgemini Canada for the web platform sustainment services contract.
“They maintain and prioritize all sustainment work with the direction of BC Hydro,” Heer said.
CGI Information Systems and Management Consultants is an Ottawa-based subsidiary of Montreal-headquartered CGI Group (TSX:GIB.A). CGI Group claims a global workforce of 68,000 in 40 countries and reported 2014 revenue of $10.5 billion. The B.C. government’s public accounts for the year ended March 31, 2015, show CGI billed taxpayers $26.3 million.
CGI Federal, another CGI Group subsidiary, was hired in 2011 for US$93.7 million to build and operate the HealthCare.gov health insurance registration portal. Its ill-fated launch on October 1, 2013, which was plagued by crashes, delays and other technical glitches, was a major embarrassment to U.S. President Barack Obama, who made health-care insurance reform a cornerstone of his 2012 re-election campaign.
Testimony to the House Energy and Commerce Committee by CGI Federal senior vice-president Cheryl Campbell on October 23, 2013, revealed that HealthCare.gov underwent just two weeks of testing before its launch.
Campbell said it was the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that decided to go live, but she conceded that CGI did not recommend a delay. Between 2011 and 2013, CGI Federal had US$2.3 billion in contract and task order awards with more than two-dozen arms of the U.S. government.
CGI and the Obama administration mutually parted ways in January 2014, and Accenture, which runs BC Hydro’s back office functions, was hired on a 12-month contract.
In a statement issued at the time, CGI spokeswoman Linda Ororisio said: “We are proud that more than 400 CGI employees worked around the clock from October through December to deliver a consumer experience that works for a vast majority of Americans.”
More than a year earlier, the Ontario government’s eHealth division cancelled a six-year, $46 million contract with CGI in September 2012 for an online diabetes registry. The ministry had already spent $24.4 million internally on the project.
According to the Ontario auditor general’s 2012 annual report, “eHealth acknowledged that the arrangement to pay the vendor only after successful completion of the contract has traded away much of the province’s control over the project’s design, progress and delivery time in exchange for price certainty.”
Shawn Derby, CGI’s senior-vice president for Western Canada, did not respond to an interview request.
“CGI is one of many vendors involved with IT and Internet at BC Hydro,” said CGI spokesman Sebastien Barange, who referred BIV to Heer.
