I take it you’re not too familiar with government-contracted, no-bid, IT development work.
Part of its badness is incompetence, part of it is design by committee, part of it is done as a strategy to require expansion of the contract to fix what wasn’t done right originally, etc., etc..
This wasn’t really a no bid situation. CGI was chosen from amongst a slate of possible vendors under HHS’s version of the DHS EAGLE contracting vehicle.
The real issue here is that government contractors are under (or stick to) the GSA schedule for hourly rates. The government tends to pay 1/2 or even 1/3 what the private sector pays for comparable titles, responsibilities and duties. That means that for most larger software companies government work is a volume bases business that anchors their financials allowing them to make their revenues up with good margins for private sector work.
But it also means that they don’t put the best/brightest (read: better paid) staff onto government engagements.
So, again, nothing to really see here from a conspiracy perspective. Absolutely predictable in fact. But also really good ground on which to continue the fight against Obamacare.