TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – A government watchdog is crying foul over the state’s decision to award an estimated $135 million contract to Deloitte, the same firm that built Florida’s flawed unemployment system.
In its report, Florida TaxWatch called the contract award hard to believe.
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The Agency for Health Care Administration did not consider how poorly the unemployment portal built by Deloitte worked before awarding the consulting firm a new nine-figure contract.
Bob Nave, vice president of research at Florida TaxWatch, a nonprofit government watchdog group, believes the state agency should have taken that information into account.
“The overarching issue is to take a look at our procurement system and just do a complete overhaul,” said Nave, who has 27 years of experience working in state government.
“The state’s track record with respect to large technology platforms has not been real good.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis has made no secret about his feelings toward the unemployment system, frequently criticizing it during the coronavirus pandemic and saying it was built to fail
“Obviously, I don’t want Deloitte getting contracts personally because we are investigating what happened with the unemployment system,” DeSantis said previously.
But when it comes to the AHCA award, the governor said there is nothing he can do.
“They dropped their price so dramatically, that it’s not clear to me that at that point they could have been denied it on neutral grounds. Maybe if you inject this issue into it,” DeSantis said.
It’s worth noting we’ve used the word estimated when referring to the final price the state is set to pay Deloitte. That’s because the firm and others consider their bids “trade secrets.”
That logic doesn’t hold water, according to the Florida First Amendment Foundation, which said it was “absolutely ridiculous” and against the law not to release that information.
Jonathan Gandal, a managing director for Deloitte, offered this statement on the contract award: “Deloitte received the highest score in an open and competitive procurement after an independent committee evaluated all the proposals and determined that we offered the best value to Florida taxpayers from both a technical and financial perspective.”