Summary: Healthcare.gov may fall victim to tender-less contract with Accenture (which put Microsoft in LSE) only weeks after a 'former' Microsoft executive was put in charge of these healthcare-related decisions

Last month we showed that Microsoft's DelBene couple was entering the US government, expecting the next move to be some government deal with Microsoft lock-in. Well, Accenture, which helped Microsoft take over the London Stock Exchange before it was dumped for GNU/Linux, has just proven us right. Under leadership of the newly-hired Microsoft mole there are bad changes planned. As iophk put it: "First the site is taken over by an MS agent, who now brings in an MS sales team to take over. The new contract is not yet signed but it is a risk. He quotes one article as saying: "CGI will be replaced by Accenture as the primary contractor on Healthcare.gov. [...] Federal health officials are preparing to sign a 12-month contract worth roughly $90 million, probably early next week, with a different company, Accenture [...] CMS is awarding the Accenture contract on a sole-source basis" (yes, corruption).

Well, iopkh called it "another no-bid deal, a fine tradition carried over from the previous administration."

"Accenture was the one that did in the LSE too," he added. "LSE booted MS and Accenture a while back... both failed too often. There are some interests that really want ACA to fail. So it is no surprise that they brought in a 'former' MS staffer and less of a surprise that it brought in an MS sales team. Probably to make it really fail they will bring in IIS and .NOT... all that would guarantee spectacular failure and lock-in."

Microsoft intervention in government affairs is not something outlandish. In fact, it's not just a problem in the US.

Top EC regulators (in addition to UNESCO, MsF etc.) are under surveillance by the NSA, based on reports that cite leaks. Based on Cablegate (Wikileaks), politicians intervene on behalf of companies like Microsoft in the affairs of free regulatory agencies in Europe. A few years ago it was revealed that US politicians with Microsoft ties were calling pro-ODF "anti-American" [1, 2], so what will happen now that on the face of it the EC recommends ODF? As one reporter put it: "All European institutes should be able to use the Open Document Format (ODF) in exchanges with citizens and national administrations, says Vice-President of the European Commission Maroš Å efčovič, in response to questions by member of the European Parliament Amelia Andersdotter. "There is no lock-in effect whatsoever, and no contradiction with the Commission's strategy on interoperability.""

This is not going to go down well with Microsoft, so the usual bullying, bribery, retribution etc. should be expected, maybe even some new moles in the Commission. We already showed a few of them some years in the past (while we watched Microsoft more closely). The bribes are cleverly disguised most of the time. ⬆