CGI Canadian software company screwed Obamacare

CGI, which very few people had heard of before this month, shows how a company can grow to become large, highly profitable, and very influential without being in the public eye—even when a big chunk of its business is funded by taxpayers.  Based in Montreal, CGI was started by founder and executive chairman Serge Godin in 1976 when Godin was 26. Today, it boasts 69,000 employees who work in an impressive array of offices around the world. You can learn about the firm’s history here, and read about its Constitution (!) here.
CGI, the giant Canada-based information technology outsourcing company that has been heavily involved in the heavily botched roll out of Healthcare.gov, the federal health insurance exchange that is the centerpiece of Obamacare.



CGI’s mission involves the usual gobbledygook about providing “end-to-end IT and business process services that facilitate the ongoing evolution of our clients’ businesses.” Translation: it’s an outsourcer. Don’t want to set up your own payroll, h.r. system, records-keeping system, computer system? CGI will gladly do it for you. “At CGI, we are in the business of delivering results,” the company notes.

Inevitably, companies like this do a lot of business with governments. Over the years, it has become easier for governments to hire outside companies who are up on the latest technology to handle such tasks. And, ironically, in this age of austerity, CGI has been doing quite well. As the chart below shows, the stock is up 38 percent in the past year.