Bid procurement needs overhaul

Florida should stop giving contracts to companies it is investigating.

What do you call someone who buys a clunker of a car, then returns to the same dealer to buy another one?

Foolish.

What do you call a state that buys a clunker of an unemployment computer system, then buys a Medicaid distribution system from the same company?

Florida.

The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration last week awarded a $110 million contract to Deloitte Consulting LLP to build a system that manages Medicaid data. Yes, that’s the same Deloitte that built the $77 unemployment system that melted down during the coronavirus pandemic.

There’s a righteous and well-deserved backlash. It’s obvious Florida’s bid-procurement process needs an overhaul. At the very least, the state should stop awarding contracts to companies it is investigating for incompetence.

But amid the howls of protest over all things Deloitte, it would be nice if someone uttered words rarely heard in Tallahassee: My fault.

You won’t hear it from Deloitte, which says it has always followed work orders from the state. You won’t hear it from Sen. Rick Scott, who got his Deloitte debacle rolling as part his crusade as governor to gut the state’s unemployment structure.

And you won’t hear it from current Gov. Ron DeSantis, who says he had nothing to do with Deloitte winning the Medicaid sweepstakes.

On that count, he is right. The governor is prohibited from getting involved in the awarding of state contracts. And there’s no evidence DeSantis put his thumb on the scale.

While there was no direct influence, DeSantis deserves no slack for his administration ignoring warnings that Deloitte’s CONNECT unemployment system was a disaster waiting to happen.

He’s gotten religion now — too late for Floridians victimized by the system meltdown.

“I think the goal was for whoever designed, it was, ‘Let’s put as many kind of pointless roadblocks along the way, so people just say, oh, the hell with it, I’m not going to do that,‘” DeSantis said last week.

In other words, it was Scott’s fault. To which Scott said: “It’s a tough time to be governor. Some people are leaders. Some people take responsibility. Some people solve problems. And some people blame others.”

That was rich coming from a politician who never met a finger he didn’t like to point.

Scott has never accepted any role in the CONNECT fiasco, saying Deloitte was selected by Charlie Crist’s administration. But the contract was signed two months after Scott’s 2011 inauguration.

Things got so bad so fast that by the end of that year the Department of Economic Opportunity was threatening to fine Deloitte $15,000 a day if it didn’t fix the problems.

Scott fiddled as the unemployment system was set up to burn. And burn it did.

Now Deloitte is a four-letter word to millions of Floridians. The state’s chief inspector general is probing the original contract. After that clunker, how can Deloitte get an even sweeter deal now?

“Bidding is an art,” Bob Jarvis, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “It is not a science.”

Five companies bid for the Medicaid contract, and Deloitte was one of two finalists. The process is designed to be objective, but let’s not kid ourselves. Connections, lobbying and politics have always played roles.

In 2013, the Department of Children and Families awarded Deloitte a $31 million contract despite rival firm Accenture making a bid that was $6 million cheaper. Coronavirus relief packages unleashed a flood of emergency no-bid contracts that went to politically connected companies.

One of the factors evaluators consider in awarding bids is a company’s past performance. It’s hard to imagine a worse performance CONNECT’s when millions of unemployment claims flooded in.

Deloitte is one of the world’s largest accounting firms and contributes heavily to politicians of from both parties. It is adept at the art of the procurement deal.

That doesn’t mean Deloitte did anything nefarious here. It doesn’t mean the company is incapable of building a functional data system.

It means that given the company’s history, Florida’s bidding system needs an overhaul. Maybe the application process needs to include a question as simple as:

Are you currently being investigated by the state of Florida for botching a previous job for the state if Florida? Yes or No.

The Medicaid contract is not finalized. DeSantis has come out against it but cannot legally veto the deal.

He can further use his bully pulpit to pressure Deloitte into dropping out or at least offering iron-clad assurances the system won’t pull a CONNECT. Then he should call for a review of the state’s entire bid procurement process.

If nothing else, it would be a good public relations move. DeSantis and Scott are supposedly eyeing 2024 presidential runs. Hence the oblique jabs they’ve been throwing at each other over who bears responsibility for Florida’s 2020 unemployment nightmare.

We’d tell people to just kick back, get some popcorn and enjoy the Ron vs. Rick Show. But there is nothing entertaining about how we got to this point.

It’s ridiculous the state is compelled to do business with a company whose system failed so badly when so many Floridians needed help. Almost as ridiculous as the notion this whole unemployment debacle is nobody’s fault.

Editorials are the opinion of the Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board and are written by one of its members or a designee. The editorial board consists of Opinion Editor Mike Lafferty, Jennifer A. Marcial Ocasio, Jay Reddick, David Whitley and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Send emails to insight@orlandosentinel.com.