Accenture-ating the Positive
March 13th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
The Texas Conservative Coalition hosted a policy panel today extolling the virtues of privatizing the in-take system for the state safety net (what the state famously handed to Accenture). The timing could have been better. While the panel was still in progress, the Health and Human Services Commission announced the cancelation of the contract with Accenture to run the state’s eligibility determination system. Accenture made a mess of the eligibility system during its four-month pilot program last year in just two counties. Finally, HHSC had enough. (Of course, some folks saw this coming three years ago, but that’s another story).
You might have thought the disaster of the Accenture contract would have some folks eating crow at the Conservative Coalition. And you would be wrong. Undeterred, the four-person panel of right-wing academics and contractors advocated handing over to private companies, well, just about anything. Among this crowd, there are few governmental functions the private sector can’t perform more efficiently.
On the panel only Anne Heiligenstein, an executive deputy commissioner at HHSC, sounded remotely hesitant about future privatization. She said that HHSC had “learned a lot” from the mistakes made by Accenture in the pilot program. One lesson, she said, was that private companies can handle certain routine functions well. But HHSC has decided that complex decisions about programs like Medicaid (and who’s admitted to them) should be left with state employees.
Which brings to mind the proposed privatization of Child Protective Services. Should the jobs of CPS case workers — who make complex, emotional decisions about foster kids — be handed to a private company? Doesn’t seem like a great idea, folks.
One thing’s for sure, if CPS case workers are privatized, we’re thinking Accenture won’t get that contract.
March 14th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
If you think Accenture made a mess of this contract, just wait until Deloitte takes it over and continues to create a boondoggle out of TIERS, which HHSC has already paid them about $300 million to create. TIERS is such a mess that HHSC would be better off starting over from scratch - or pay someone competent (not Deloitte) about $100 million to fix it.
Also, you should note that both HHSC and Accenture realized that the original idea of outsourcing complex policy based decisions wasn’t going to work about a year ago. This decision is really just a cop-out by people within HHSC to try to assign blame and get their buddies back into a contract.
March 23rd, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Interesting to note that as of today (3/23/07) Accenture still lists its contract with Texas HHSC on its corporate website’s list of “successes” with govt outsourcing. “High Performance Delivered” they say (http://www.accenture.com/Global/Services/By_Industry/Government/Client_Successes/TexasRationalization.htm):
Higher levels of performance were realized during the transition of Medicaid responsibilities to TMHP. Those include seamless on-time transition of Medicaid services from the incumbent contractor, building an entire data center from scratch, testing over 800 system interfaces, and installing 13,000 pieces of software on 1,000 PCs over a four-day period.
During the operations of the Medicaid program, Accenture has established client trust and open working relationship and communication. Performance indicators include processing claims three times faster and paying more claims in our first cycle than the incumbent, processing 1.6 million claims in the first financial cycle (the largest ever) and deploying a new portal that created a self-service channel for claims status and eligibility verification transactions. With the new contract and Accenture’s help, the state expects to save $40 million annually.
April 11th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
IF STATE WORKERS WOULD HAVE DONE THIER THE TAA PROJECT WOULD NOT HAVE EVER STARTED:: BUT THE HHSC WORKERS DIDN’T AND STILL ARE NOT… THEY HAVE EVERYTHING SO MESS UP THE STATE HEALTH CARE WILL NEVER BE RIGHT….. COME HOW HARD IS IT FOR A HHSC CASEWORKER TO PUT THE CORRECT COUNTY IN FOR RECIPS…. WHICH DELAY SERVICE.. CAUSE THEY HAVE TO WAIT MONTHS TO HAVE IT CORRECTED……. MOTHER OF RECIPS ON TX MEDICAID!!!!
July 6th, 2007 at 9:51 am
The fascinating thing about all this is that the government entities involved have been offered help in creating a prototype to show how easily good software could be created and they have declined the offer of help. The real story here is the ineptness of various officials, their stubborn refusals to accept help, and the utter waste of taxpayer money. The story is very similar to what is happening in Colorado and California with similar projects. Taxpayers should be outraged.