Stand aside, Disney World.
The real magic in Florida happens in Contractilandia, the place where you can be an epic failure _ and the government will reward you with another $135 million contract to take another shot at messing things up!
To borrow from Mickey Mouse: Meeska, Mooska, Gov. Ron DeSantis, let's give Deloitte Consulting another contract!
The carnival of incompetence is a thrilling ride, unless you're on the receiving end of needed services, like Florida's unemployed or Medicaid recipients.
Then, you pay the price for the negligence of not one, but two governors.
There's Rick Scott, who in March 2011 contracted Deloitte Consulting to build the crappy Florida CONNECT website, where Floridians could apply for unemployment benefits at an initial cost of $40 million that _ 13 amendments to the contract later _ turned into a $77.9 million payout.
What did Floridians get for their money at their peak time of need, when the coronavirus pandemic left more than 1.2 million jobless?
The expensive boondoggle wouldn't let people log on. When they miraculously got in at midnight, the website would freeze, swallowing information that took hours to collect and enter.
Try again. Crash.
Try again. Crash
Technology experts immediately recognized it as a botched job. In this day and age, building a website should be elementary stuff. The website was made clunky and outdated on purpose, a Miami Herald investigation confirmed.
Scott, the multimillionaire tightwad who's now a U.S. senator, didn't want people to collect unemployment.
Floridians' frustrating quest for emergency relief to make basic ends meet _ to which all Americans are entitled _ went on for months.
DESANTIS AND COVID JOBLESS
Enter DeSantis, who did next to nothing to provide immediate relief to the moneyless Floridians angry over the disastrous website.
The governor chalked it up to "a capacity issue."
But on May 4, with inquiries and criticism raining down on him, DeSantis promised his inspector general would investigate the contract with Deloitte Consulting to produce the state's unemployment website.
"If you look at the different costs, there was a lot of money that went into this," he said at a press conference. "People want an accounting. It's one thing to not have a good system if you go on the cheap or whatever, but to pay that much money and all the problems we've had to deal with, it's a big problem."
Getting a full accounting, he said, "that's something very important for the people of Florida to know."
No kidding.
But here we are in August still waiting for answers.
Deloitte, on the other hand, must be elated.
It beat four competitors for a state contract worth $135 million to centralize and manage Florida's Medicaid data, the state Agency for Health Care Administration has announced.
Among the losing bidders were established corporations such as IBM and Accenture.
WHERE'S DELOITTE INVESTIGATION?
In what la-la land does the DeSantis administration dwell?
The unemployment debacle has been an ongoing scandal.
How can state government reward its Deloitte with another contract? If it couldn't handle unemployment, it can't be trusted to be part of the overhaul of Florida's $23 billion Medicaid system.
Florida CONNECT had serious problems before coronavirus.
Between 2015 and 2019, state auditors reported three times that the website experienced serious glitches, but they went unaddressed by the Scott and DeSantis administrations, the Miami Herald/Tampa Times reported.
How can Deloitte land a new contract when the old one is supposedly under investigation?
One of the criteria used to evaluate who got the Medicaid data contract is the ability to meet needs of the state "based on the relative experience in the performance of current or previous contracts ... similar in size, scope, and complexity in the past five years."
Deloitte clearly doesn't meet it.
And, what's the status of the promised investigation of the unemployment website contract?
I posed the questions to DeSantis spokesman Fred Piccolo, but he didn't answer.
At a Friday press conference in Orlando, DeSantis addressed the contract controversy, but he didn't say much.
He distanced himself from it, saying legally he couldn't get involved in contract discussions. A protest has been filed on the contract, but DeSantis wouldn't say by whom.
"It'd be my preference that (Deloitte) not get anything," DeSantis said. "At the same time, there's a process, unfortunately, that has to play out."
It's a happy place, Tallahassee.
Politicians and bureaucrats can remain unaccountable.
Like in Disney, there's an underground operation no one can see or hear.
But, for the connected, Contractilandia works like magic.
Poof, the investigation is meaningless.
Poof, prior employment performance doesn't count.
Poof, here's some more deliciously expensive candy for the business class.
No, not for you, Floridian.
On this ride, the unemployed and the Medicaid recipients get to eat whatever stale, moldy cake the contractor and governor serve them.
