CMS Awarded Accenture No-Bid Contract On Healthcare.gov

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services did not believe CGI Federal, its former Healthcare.gov contractor, could complete its work on the site in time, and thus selected Accenture as the new contractor with a no-bid $90 million-plus contract, according to documents.

In the ‘Justification for Other than Full and Open Competition,’ posted on FedBizOpps.gov, CMS wrote that the “current FFM development contractor is not going to be able to complete the development of the required functionality by the required date,” of which CMS wrote is an “urgently needed” functionality and “critical to the successful national deployment of the marketplace.” Further, CMS said that if the functionality is not done by mid-March 2014 it will result in financial harm to the government, and could lead to erroneous payments to providers and insurers.

The normal lead time for an open competition is six to 12 months, but CMS said in its justification for the no-bid that the Centers “require [Accenture] to perform the urgently required services.”