Update: Cost of Hotels for President Obama's Ethiopia Stay Likely Tops $1 Million

     The cost of lodging for President Obama and his entourage for his recent visit to Ethiopia has more than doubled to $837,000 with the addition of two more hotel contracts. Last week, THE WEEKLY STANDARD reported on a $412,000 contract for 1,280 sleeping room nights at the Hilton Hotel in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. However, at least two other hotels were booked for the visit, and a fourth hotel was also used, although no contract has yet been posted.
     One of the additional hotels was the Elilly Hotel. The contract total was estimated at $246,877.06 for 120 sleeping room, but the number of nights covered is not revealed in the paperwork:

     Another of the additional hotels was the Capital Hotel and Spa. The estimated total for that contract was $178, 433.71 for 1000 room nights:

    

     According to the hotel's website, the Capital Hotel and Spa was awarded Ethiopia's first five-star rating just days after the president's visit.
     The total of the three posted contracts comes to $837,700. However, according to official White House photographer Pete Souza, the president actually stayed in a suite at the Sheraton Hotel, a 294-room hotel in the Ethiopian capital. Souza shared this information in an anecdote on the White House Medium site:

During that same trip in 2006, the Senator [Obama] had also visited the Republic of Djibouti. We weren’t able to accompany him on that leg of the trip. So instead we had to stay overnight at a hotel in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. My colleague at the time, Jeff Zeleny — the king of hotel points — was able to secure a suite at the Sheraton hotel. Nine years later, when we returned to Addis Ababa this week, President Obama stayed in the very same suite.

     A Florida-based businessman who was in Addis Ababa during the president's visit provided confirmation during an interview with THE WEEKLY STANDARD. The businessman stayed in the Hilton which "was crawling with support staff and security", but "the President stayed across the street at the Sheraton. The US locals I was working with told me that the US Government had bought out the entire Sheraton while Obama was in Addis."
     The Sheraton was also the host for at least two meetings the president participated in during his stay, a "multilateral meeting on South Sudan and counterterrorism issues with Kenya, Sudan, Ethiopia, the African Union and Uganda" and "a meeting with Ethiopian civil society activists."
     The value of the Sheraton contract would likely push the total cost of lodging for the Ethiopia leg of the trip over $1 million, but as noted earlier, it has not yet been posted. Contracts for the Kenya stop have not been posted either. The president spent two nights in Ethiopia and two nights in Kenya during his trip to Africa.

Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

Kerry: Nations Prosper When 'Citizens Have Faith in Their Governments'

    Speaking Tuesday at the 45th Annual Washington Conference of the Council of the Americas, Secretary of State John Kerry said that "countries are far more likely to advance economically and socially when citizens have faith in their governments and are able to rely on them for justice and equal treatment under the law." Kerry said that a "new kind of relationship" with Latin American countries, emphasizing democracy and human rights, will contribute to "our common agenda for the hemisphere." Here are Kerry's remarks in fuller context:

At the UN Human Rights Council last fall, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Uruguay joined the United States in sponsoring a resolution in support of LGBT rights. Our landmark Open Government Partnership, which the United States launched with Brazil five years ago, is now chaired by Mexico. And over the past three years, we have worked with partners, including Costa Rica, Mexico, Chile, and Jamaica, to help strengthen the independent bodies of the Inter-American Human Rights System. Many of the globe’s leading voices for human rights and the rule of law, obviously, share Spanish as their native tongue. 

Why does this matter? Well, it matters because countries are far more likely to advance economically and socially when citizens have faith in their governments and are able to rely on them for justice and equal treatment under the law. It matters because young people who have opportunities at home will stay and contribute to their societies instead of leaving in search of better luck elsewhere. It matters because freedom of thought and expression are the keys to innovation, which is how whole new industries begin. It matters because, in that most curious of ways, people who are given the liberty to be different are also the ones most likely to unite and band together in the face of shared threats.

    If faith in government is a necessary factor for a country's economic and social advancement, a recent Pew Research Center study, via the Washington Post, is not a good sign. The Post notes that the study found that only "23 percent [of Americans] trust the federal government to do the right thing 'at least most of the time.'"

Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

State Dept. to Offer Course on Ethics for Journalists: 'Blurred Lines'

     The U.S. State Department is looking to design and facilitate a media ethics course for journalists in India, and has even proposed appropriating the name of Robin Thicke's 2013 hit "Blurred Lines" as a title for the course. The U.S. Consulate General in Hyderabad, India is looking for a non-profit to co-develop the course to help Indian journalists gain a "baseline understanding of the international industry standards," including "accuracy, honesty, transparency, impartiality, and accountability," and is willing to spend $20,000 - $25,000 on it.
     The grant documents note that credibility is a key part of journalists' jobs to "keep their readership informed, hold us all accountable, filter fact from fiction, and unmask false narratives masquerading as truth." To that end, the State Department would like a full-time faculty member to propose curriculum content and develop a syllabus tailored to communicate journalistic standards to an Indian university audience. Additionally, the grant calls for a "U.S.-based, university-level journalism professor," suggested by the non-profit subject to approval by the State Department, to act as consultant in the development of the course.
     Once the course preparation is complete, the journalism professor will visit India at least three times: to meet with the coordinating university in India and "observe existing on-the-job training in various media houses", to conduct a three day seminar for other stakeholders, and to participate in first offering of the newly-designed course. The grant specifies that both the accommodations for the professor and the venue for the seminar must be a four-star hotel.
    The Indian universities of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Odisha are singled as as participants in this project, but once developed, the State Department plans to make the material available for potential use by other diplomatic offices around India in coordination with other Indian universities around the country.
    The grant announcement for "Blurred Lines" comes a month after Robin Thicke and co-songwriter Pharrell Williams were found by a court to have been guilty of their own ethical lapses in the writing of the song of the same name. The two have been ordered to pay over $7 million to Marvin Gaye's estate over plagiarism of Gaye's 1977 song "Got to Give It Up."

Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

Feds Paid Politico $432K in 2014 [Updated]

Since Politico, a politics-focused website and newspaper, launched its subscription-based news service Politico Pro in 2011, government agencies have increasingly turned to the service to keep abreast of the latest developments in their spheres of policy. Government records show fiscal year 2011 contracts with the owner of Politico, Capitol News Company, totaling $41,900. By fiscal year 2014, there were no fewer than twenty-eight contracts with sixteen different departments and agencies, including the Executive Office of the President, totaling $431,800.

A chart from the USASpending.gov website illustrates the trend (including the first five and a half months of fiscal year 2015):

The first five and a half months of fiscal 2015 have seen fifteen contracts for $198,188, although at least one agency, the FCC, appears not to have renewed a $50,000 fiscal 2014 contract in 2015.

Although not all of the records found under Capitol News Service explicitly name "Politico Pro" in their descriptions, the primary categories used for the contracts strongly suggest the premium Pro service is the subject of most, if not all of them. Most contracts are categorized as Web-Based Subscription, Newspapers and Periodicals, and Support- Administrative: Library. (Two additional contracts are clearly mis-classified as ADP Software; the descriptions of both include "Politico Pro.")

In addition to the $49,862 contract with the FCC, the other two top dollar 2014 contracts were with the Department of Energy ($61,496) and the Treasury Department ($60,000). Although the larger contracts do not include a breakdown on the number of users permitted under the subscriptions, some of the smaller ones give some details. A $4,995 contract for 2015 with the Executive Office of the President, for example, is for five users for 12 months, while a $2,495 contract for 2015 with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is for "five additional licenses required for incoming commissioner." 

Before Politico Pro's launch, the New York Times reported that Politico does not have a set rate for the Politico Pro service, but rather tailors subscriptions for an organization's number and areas of policy interests. At least one government department determined at one time that the price was too steep: The Washington Post reported in January 2014 that the Education Department declined the service due to the cost. The Education Department had a change of heart in 2015, however, signing a $14,985 contract this year.

In most cases, not only is Politico Pro the preferred policy news service for government agencies, it's the only service some will consider. Most of the contracts for Politico Pro that can be found on the FBO.gov contracting website were awarded on a "sole-source" basis. Other vendors who believe they are able to offer a comparable service were permitted to submit proposals, but in the absence of compelling evidence, the agencies are often effusive in their praise of what they see as Politico Pro's unique product.

For instance, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says, "it was found that the content contained in Politico Pro's product is crucial to the successful completion of the CFPB mission." The Treasury Department's Bureau of the Public Debt has this to say: "Politico Pro is the only source with the early and valuable behind the scenes information that is essential for OFR to respond quickly and plan strategy to newly introduced legislation. This coverage cannot be provided by comparable news outlets or vendors." The Environmental Protection Agency cites the "unbiased" presentation of information as a major benefit: "Politico Pro is unique in that it also does not provide too much content and analysis, which many other services provide. It is first and foremost a news agency, not an analytical organization, and as such it provides information in an unbiased and accessible way."

Since 2011, the federal government has contracted with Capitol News Company for a grand total of $917,193. Capitol News Company's annual revenue is listed as $30,000,000 under "Contractor Characteristics" at the USASpending website. This means that the total government contracts of $431,800 for 2014 represented about 1.4% of the company's total revenue for the year.

Politico did not respond to an email requesting comment for this article. 

UPDATE: After this post ran at The Weekly Standard, Politico's Mike Allen noted it in his Politico Playbook feature, headlined "WHY ELITE OFFICIALS read Politico Pro." Allen  framed the story as more of a commercial for Politico Pro, however, ignoring the taxpayer dollars involved. He begins:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s Jeryl Bier reports why POLITICO Pro – our premium subscription service, covering 14 policy areas, from Agriculture to Transportation – is a favorite for elite administration officials...

The whole thing is here, the twelfth item.

Note: A version of this post (before the update) appeared first at The Weekly Standard.

Cost of Healthcare.gov Exceeds $2.2B After Latest Contract Award

    With the announcement Monday of a five-year, $563 million contract award to Accenture, the Healthcare.gov contractor that rescued the Obamacare marketplace after 2013's disastrous launch, the total cost of the site will well exceed $2.2 billion. The new award is on top of the $1.7 billion in contracts reported by the inspector general (OIG) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in August.
    Accenture was first hired in January after HHS replaced CGI Federal, the original contractor. Accenture reported the new award on its website, noting that not only will the company maintain current services, but is expanding its work to include the small business health plans marketplace (SHOP), and will also assist those state-based exchanges that have decided to transition to the federal site:

As the 2014 enrollment period closed successfully with Accenture’s support, work began to prepare for the 2015 enrollment. Accenture focused on simplifying the process for issuers to update plans, and implemented tools and processes to expedite the resolution of citizen inquiries.  At the same time, Accenture worked with CMS to find new ways to streamline and improve the customer experience. CMS later expanded Accenture’s scope of work to include enhancements and additional functionality of the FFM, the SHOP and state-based exchange transitions.  All of these efforts helped create a successful launch of the 2015 Open Enrollment season that continues through February 15, 2015.

     Although the transition from CGI Federal to Accenture appears to have been successful, the government is still struggling with other aspects of the marketplace. Although Hewlett-Packard was selected to replace Verizon (Terremark) in June 2013 as the host for Healthcare.gov, Verizon was awarded an emergency contract just four weeks before the current open enrollment period began, extending its contract into 2015. The new Hewlett-Packard system is acting only as backup system and a "development environment" for the current open enrollment period.


Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

Update on Obama's Australia Trip: Five Hotels, $2.1M

    When President Obama visited Brisbane, Australia in November for the G-20 summit, the entire delegation required multiple hotels and thousands of "room nights" for the length of the stay, though the president himself spent only one night in his hotel. Initially, as first reported by THE WEEKLY STANDARD, it appeared a total of three hotels and 4,096 room nights were booked. However, additional contracts posted last week bring the total to 5,146 room nights and $2.1 million.
    In addition to the Marriott, the Urban and the Adina hotels, the state department also contracted with the Watermark and the Traders hotels in Brisbane. The Traders contract was for $224,776.66 to cover 503 room nights plus function space, while the Watermark was $175,263.67 for 547 room nights. An attempt was made to confirm that no more hotel contracts were issued for this trip, but after an initial response acknowledging the inquiry, no answer was forthcoming.
    Each of the contract documents states that "Senior High Level USG Principal traveling with a delegation inclusive of support elements in: Security, Communications, Logistics and Operations." Despite the 5,000-plus "room nights" in the contracts, the number of persons on the trip could be considerably less since advance security teams, diplomatic personnel and others may arrive in advance and stay multiple days or even weeks. The state department has been reluctant in the past to reveal details about the size of the delegations accompanying the president on such trips, and the Australia trip is no exception. The state department did not respond to a request to clarify, even broadly, the number of US government personnel that were involved in this trip.

Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

Documents: Healthcare.gov Narrowly Avoided Repeat of Last Year's Debacle

    Less than four weeks before the launch of 2015 open enrollment for Obamacare, the government agency that runs Healthcare.gov suddenly realized the Marketplace site was heading for a repeat of last year's debacle. Documents show that on October 19, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a division of Health and Human Services (HHS), learned that a shortage of computer storage would "cause long outages and slow response times" leading to "a poor user experience." An emergency, no-bid contract for $1.8 million was quickly awarded to Terremark (a subsidiary of Verizon) for 100 terabytes of additional storage plus various computer licenses.
    Since the order was needed in such a hurry, the government decided to skip the usual bidding process mandated for such a contract, a practice that has not been uncommon in the development of Healthcare.gov to date. The Limited Source Justification that was required and subsequently approved internally at CMS spelled out the consequences of delay in stark terms:

    The documents do not disclose how long installation and configuration of the new equipment would take. However, shortly after the problem was discovered on October 19, Healthcare.gov was shutdown for "weekend maintenance" on a Wednesday, October 22. It remains unclear if this shutdown was related to the inadequacies CMS discovered, and CMS did not return an email at the time requesting comment.
    Terremark/Verizon is actually the outgoing contractor for Healthcare.gov. The government announced in June 2013 that Hewlett-Packard would be replacing Terremark/Verizon. However, launch problems and other delays led to numerous extensions on the Terremark/Verizon contract. Most recently, as THE WEEKLY STANDARD reported in September, CMS disclosed that the Terremark/Verizon system would continue to host Healthcare.gov through 2015 open enrollment with the new Hewlett-Packard system acting only as backup and as a "development environment".
    By most accounts, the current open enrollment period is proceeding with few of the problems experienced in the fall of 2013. CMS has undergone some reorganization in the past year, but at least some of the steps spelled out by former HHS director Kathleen Sebelius are still unfulfilled. In a December 2013 press appearance, Sebelius announced her intention to create a Chief Risk Officer position at CMS to, in part, oversee future IT (information technology) planning and purchases such as the one described above and prevent unpleasant surprises. However, the position is still vacant and both CMS and HHS have disregarded numerous inquiries about the status of Sebelius's commitment.


Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

'Sheriff Biden' Versus The Weed Agency

    In a 2011 blog post titled There's a New Sheriff in Town, the White House announced that Vice President Joe Biden was spearheading a new "effort to root out wasteful spending at every agency and department in the Federal Government" called the Campaign to Cut Waste. As if to emphasize the urgency of the situation, another post went up on the White House blog just fifty-six minutes later entitled TooManyWebsites.gov (a tongue-in-cheek title). Then-Director of Digital Strategy Macon Phillips singled out several websites on Sheriff Biden's most wanted list:

As the President points out in this video, our government doesn't need a website dedicated to foresters who play the fiddle. We also don’t need multiple sites dealing with invasive plants (here and here).  And I‘m pretty sure the website dedicated to the Centennial of Flight can come down... particularly since the Centennial was in 2003.

     Here's where reality runs smack into fiction, or vice versa. In 2014, National Review's Jim Geraghty released his novel The Weed Agency. His book chronicles the saga of the fictional USDA Agency of Invasive Species, a zombie-like government entity that refuses to quit. In a parallel with Geraghty's book that almost seems like a promotional stunt, the two real-life "invasive plant" websites showcased by the White House more than three years ago as examples of redundancy that we "don't need"... both still exist today (here and here, and pictured below):

    As you might imagine, Geraghty wasn't exactly caught flat-footed by this revelation.  When asked for comment, he responded:

Somehow I am less than stunned to see that bold promises about cutting waste have not been kept. Barack Obama and Joe Biden, like Bill Clinton and Al Gore before them, and Jimmy Carter before them, knew that a key part of the progressive agenda requires restoring people's faith in government, including its efficiency and effectiveness. Thus, they contend - and fool themselves into thinking -- they have some magic formula for getting large bureaucracies with many layers of middle management, widely dispersed accountability, and a culture of complacency - and turning them into cost-efficient well-oiled machines. The forces of the status quo nods, smiles and carries on as if nothing changed. The difference between the Right and the Left is that this drives us bonkers, while the Left eventually shrugs its shoulders and accepts it as part of the price of doing business, so to speak.

     The invasive plant websites were not the only ones to evade, at least initially, Biden's Campaign to Cut Waste. As Macon Phillips points out in his blog post, President Obama himself recorded a video in which he derided the notion that the federal government needed "a website dedicated to foresters who play the fiddle." Here's a screen capture of the website from the president's video:

    However, more than three years after President Obama's chiding video was recorded, the government was still paying for the "fiddlin' foresters" site. (The address to which the White House linked, "fiddllinforresters.gov", never actually existed; both "fiddllin" and "forresters" were spelled incorrectly in the url Phillips used.) As recently as May 2014, www.fiddlinforesters.us was still in place as this archived page shows:

    While visitors to the main address of the site were greeted with a message that the "site has been temporarily shut down," the whole site was actually still intact. A check on the domain registration for the site reveals an official Forest Service email address and phone number under contact information. The individual listed is none other than one of the original Fiddlin' Foresters, Jane Leche, who works as a Public Affairs Specialist for the Forest Service. So while the website was finally shut down, the domain name remains registered even today.
     The final example in the TooManyWebsites.gov blog post was the Centennial of Flight website. This government-operated website celebrating the Wright Brothers' first flight did not go down without a fight, either. More than a year after Macon Phillips said he was "pretty sure the website... can come down," a cached version shows it was still hanging on in October 2012, though its days were numbered.
    However, even in this case, that's not the end of the story. The site was rescued by a non-profit organization and centennialofflight.gov was rechristened centennialofflight.net where the original content of the site is preserved and even updated. But, in fairness, at least it's no longer on the government's dime.
    Finally, Vice President Biden singled out one more website in the New Sheriff in Town blog post, noting that "your tax dollars pay for a website dedicated to the Desert Tortoise." That website indeed was shut down, though more than a year later the site was still active as a redirect... to the new tortoise site at majovedata.gov... which was also subsequently shut down. However, in true government fashion, the desert tortoise is by no means ignored. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, and the Environmental Protection Agency all have the desert tortoise well covered:

    Jim Geraghty has pointed out that his novel The Weed Agency debuted back in June at number eight on the Washington Post's Bestsellers list, it was categorized, ironically enough, under "Nonfiction/General". The government's real-world inability to even eliminate redundant websites certainly lends credence to the suggestion that the preternatural resilience of the Agency of Invasive Species portrayed in Geraghty's book is all too realistic.
    When launching the Campaign to Cut Waste in 2011, Vice President Joe Biden wrote, "So, folks, we’re changing the way your government does business (and spends your hard-earned tax dollars), and I think you’re going to like the results." As it turns out, the "folks" might not agree.

Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

Feds Spend $38K on Metric System Superhero Cartoons

    The American public has resisted the metric system for decades, but that has not discouraged the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) from sinking $37,950 into two more episodes of a "motion-comic" video series called "The League of SI Superheroes." (SI stands for International System of Units, the modern metric system.)
    According to the NIST, these "newest champions of measurement" have emerged "from their environmentally shielded headquarters around the globe," and "are dedicated to the fight against uncertainty, imprecision and inaccuracy and to improving the quality of our lives and the things we build." The first episode, posted on Youtube in May 2014, has drawn about 3,200 views in five months:

    The NIST intends the series to be used in middle schools, although Aloe Design, the company that designated produced the videos, says the target audience is a ninth graders. In keeping with the Obama administration's emphasis on STEM education, the NIST says the series "was designed to encourage students to learn about metric measurements as they consider science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers. SI familiarity and fluency must be developed along the STEM career pipeline to prepare the future workers with essential measurement skills."
    The superheroes themselves, pictured here, include Meter Man, Ms. Ampere, Dr. Kelvin and four others:

    At about $38,000 for two episodes and 3,200 views so far on the pilot episode, the cost per view is about $6.00. The NIST assures viewers that the League of SI Superheroes hopes "to release another of their harrowing adventures to the public soon." It remains to be seen if the first installment will have educators and students tuning back in for sequels, giving the NIST a better return on taxpayer dollars down the road.

Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

HHS Seeks Birth Control... For Deer

    These days, mentioning birth control and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the same sentence will likely draw some strong reactions. But a recent contractor inquiry by HHS for its National Institutes of Health (NIH) campus in Bethesda, Maryland adds a new wrinkle. This time, the focus is on deer.
     The NIH site in Maryland is a 500-acre research facility, fully enclosed with a nine-foot perimeter fence and access gates. Lately, the campus has been, relatively speaking, overrun with deer; in this case, overrun means an estimated population of thirty to forty. A Youtube video taken earlier this year on the campus near the access gates illustrates the dilemma in which NIH finds itself:

    As the video shows and the documents say, "[t]he campus is densely developed with few remaining open spaces suitable as deer habitat.  The property is surrounded by high density residential and commercial development."  After mentioning that hunting has never been permitted on campus, the HHS document deadpans that "there are no non-human predators present that are capable of limiting a deer population," a fact for which NIH employees are no doubt grateful. So now that the deer population has reached "a level that is incompatible with some local land uses," NIH is seeking a solution and seems to have settled upon birth control: specifically, ovariectomies.
    Apparently thinking long-term, NIH is not looking for a contractor simply to perform the initial work, but one that can train NIH veterinary staff to perform the operations in the future:

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), Office of Research Services (ORS), within the Office of the Director (OD) has a requirement to provide the NIH with wildlife expertise for the control of the deer population on the Bethesda Campus.  The contractor will perform ovariectomies on adult female deer, provide tagging and provide expert advice for humanely controlling the deer population.   Additionally, the contractor will provide training of NIH veterinary staff in the performance of ovariectomies in deer.

    The NIH plan includes using tranquilizer darts to catch an appropriate number of does to sufficiently regulate the size of the deer population. After the operations, the does will be monitored for infection and treated for pain as well before being released. And although hunting is still forbidden on campus, NIH is taking no chances. One of the requirements of the contract is that "[a]ll ovariectomized animals will be fitted with livestock ear tags labeled 'Do Not Consume'."

Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

Feds to Spend $500,000 for New Art at Customs and Border Protection Facility in San Diego

    The "busiest land port of entry in the Western Hemisphere" is getting an upgrade, and according to the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), about a half a million dollars worth of new artwork will be part of the package. The San Ysidro Land Port of Entry, the border crossing facility for the San Diego-Tijuana region, has been undergoing a $735 million modernization project spanning more than a decade. Since Phase Three of the project is included in President Obama's fiscal 2015 budget, the GSA has begun soliciting contractors, and that includes artists who will be commissioned to provided approximately $500,000 in new artwork for the new buildings.

GSA will modernize and expand the San Ysidro Land Port of Entry to better meet the needs of its tenants: U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Border Patrol, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The project entails the phased reconfiguration and expansion of the existing facility to improve pedestrian and vehicular processing, increase operational efficiency, provide greater officer and public safety, decrease operational and maintenance costs, and improve the traveler's experience of crossing the border. The full build-out consists of the demolition and construction of the new port, including primary and secondary inspection areas, administration building, pedestrian building, and other supporting structures... 

GSA allocates one-half of one percent of the estimated construction costs of new or modernized federal buildings for art commissions. The art budget for Phase 3 of the San Ysidro Land Port of Entry project is estimated at $500,000. One or more artists will be awarded a fixed-price contract for a commission.

     The plan for the San Ysidro facility is in keeping with the GSA's Art in Architecture program, in which one-half of one percent of the construction costs for new federal buildings is budgeted for artwork. The GSA's website describes the program:

GSA reserves one-half of one percent of the estimated construction cost of each new federal building to commission project artists. A panel composed of art professionals, civic and community representatives, the project’s lead design architect, and GSA staff meets to discuss opportunities for artists to participate in the building project. This panel reviews a diverse pool of artist candidates and nominates finalists for GSA to evaluate. Artists who receive federal commissions work with the project architects and others as members of a design team to ensure that the artworks are meaningfully integrated into the overall project.

    The GSA provides Alexander Calder's sculpture Flamingo (1974) at the John C. Kluczynski Federal Building in Chicago as an example:

    Artists have until October 6 to register to be considered for the San Ysidro project. Phase Three of the project is expected to be completed in January 2018. About 50,000 northbound vehicles and 25,000 northbound pedestrians cross the border through the facility each day.


Note: A version of this article first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

Feds: Cost of Healthcare.gov Estimated $1.7 Billion

    The federal government issued sixty contracts from 2009 to 2014 in efforts to build the federal insurance marketplace. According to a report issued today by the inspector general (OIG) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the government had already paid out just under half a billion dollars by February 2014, five months after the beginning of open enrollment. The government is already under obligation for another $300 million, and the estimated value of the sixty contracts totals $1.7 billion. The OIG provided a summary of its findings:

The 60 contracts related to the development and operation of the Federal Marketplace started between January 2009 and January 2014. The purpose of the 60 contracts ranged from health benefit data collection and consumer research to cloud computing and Web site development. The original estimated values of these contracts totaled $1.7 billion; the contract values ranged from $69,195 to over $200 million. Across the 60 contracts, nearly $800 million has been obligated for the development of the Federal Marketplace as of February 2014. As of that date, CMS had paid nearly $500 million for the development of the Federal Marketplace to the contractors awarded these contracts.

    A few familiar names appear on the list of contracts, such as Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. Also appearing are CGI Federal, widely blamed for the botched roll out of the site last October, and Accenture Federal Services, which has taken over for CGI in hopes this year's open enrollment will go better than 2013.
    The inspector general presented the report on the contracts largely with commentary, instead noting that "[i]n the coming months, OIG will be issuing additional, indepth audits and evaluations that look more closely at contracting for the Federal Marketplace and will include, when appropriate, recommendations to resolve vulnerabilities we identify and/or build on promising approaches."


Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

Under Obamacare, HHS Begins Fingerprinting "High Risk" Medicare Providers and Suppliers

    Four years after Obamacare became law, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is notifying Medicare providers and suppliers of new fingerprint-based background checks.  Eventually, all individuals who hold a five percent or greater stake in a Medicare supplier or provider that is categorized as "high risk" will be subject to the requirement.  The provision is part of the Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP Program Integrity Provisions (Title E) of the Affordable Care Act, and gives the HHS secretary broad discretion in applying the background check requirements depending on the potential for abuse, fraud and/or waste.

    The new requirements are spelled out in a document posted online on the website of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) last Friday.  The new rules will apply to both current and future enrollees who are classified as "high risk," the stated purpose being to weed out "bad actors" in the Medicare program and prevent any more from enrolling.

    This particular document is a "News Flash" from CMS's Medicare Learning Network and is addressed to suppliers and providers who submit claims for "Durable Medical Equipment Medicare Administrative Contractors (DME MACs) and Home Health and Hospice (HH&H) MACs for services provided to Medicare beneficiaries."  There is no effective date or implementation date listed on the document; rather, the document states that "fingerprint-based background check implementation will be phased in beginning in 2014," and that those affected will receive letters after which the individuals will have thirty days to comply with the finger-printing requirement.  The fingerprints will be submitted to the FBI for a background check and will be stored by the government in accordance with federal requirements and FBI guidelines.

    Although initially the new regulations will only be applied to providers and suppliers of "Durable Medicare Equipment, Prosthetics, Orthotics, and Supplies (DMEPOS) suppliers or Home Health Agencies (HHA)," the "high risk" category is defined at the discretion of the HHS secretary and may be expanded in the future.


Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

$1.5M Hotel Contract for President's One-Day Visit to Brussels

    In late March, President Obama took a week-long trip through Europe which included a stop of less than 24 hours in Brussels, Belgium for meetings with the European Union and NATO.  The president stayed at The Hotel, a twenty-seven story hotel in the center of the city.  The estimated cost for the president's stay, including about two weeks for an advance team, was $1,522,646.36.

    Despite reports that the president travelled with an entourage of 900, the Justification and Approval documents only indicate a need for "283 Lodging Rooms."  However, sometimes more than one hotel is used during VIP trips.  For instance, when the president travelled to South Africa for Nelson Mandela's funeral, five different hotels were used.

    Contracts for lodging have not yet been posted for the president's other stops during his European trip which included the Netherlands and Rome, Italy.


Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

Feds Spend Another $20M on Healthcare.gov

    The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released details of the latest contract with Terremark Federal Group covering "open market items" required for the ongoing operation of Healthcare.gov.  The documents include an itemized list of computing and network services, fees, licenses and computing capacity.  The total comes to $19,755.465.98 and covers four months:

    The expenditures appear to relate to the increased capacity that CMS has said was being added in anticipation of increased interest in obtaining Marketplace insurance as the March 31 deadline nears. The government had previously announced that Terremark, a subsidiary of Verizon, was being replaced by Hewlett-Packard.  However, since the switch-over was scheduled for the end of March just as open enrollment is ending, CMS awarded Terremark a $58,000,000, seven-month extension back in January.

    The two contracts mentioned above are just the latest in a string of contracts awards, solicitations, and sources-sought notices by CMS since Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the creation of a new Chief Risk Officer (CRO) position at CMS on December 11, 2013.  Sebelius described the new CRO's initial task as follows:

The Chief Risk Officer’s first assignment will be to review risk management practices when it comes to IT [information technology] acquisition and contracting, starting with identifying the risk factors that impeded the successful launch of the HealthCare.gov website.  I will ask this individual to report back to me in 60 days with recommendations for strategies to mitigate risks in future large-scale, CMS contracting and IT acquisition projects.

    Three and a half months have passed since Sebelius instructed CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner to create the position, but both HHS and CMS have been silent about it during that time.  No announcements or press releases have discussed the position, and as we first reported back on February 7, the organizational chart for CMS lists no Chief Risk Officer.  Nevertheless, CMS has continued to contract for tens of millions of dollars in IT goods and services, the very expenditures for which the new CRO was to submit "recommendations for strategies to mitigate risks" within 60 days of being appointed.
    Numerous emails to HHS and CMS inquiring about the position have gone unanswered.


Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

HHS Invokes 'In Sickness and in Health' to Push Obamacare

    For the latest installment in Department of Health and Human Services Obamacare "My #GetCovered Story" series, HHS has borrowed a line from the traditional wedding vows: "In sickness and in health."  In a blog post of that title, a "theater artist" from Chicago, Illinois tells the story of how her own experiences have put a "new light on the phrase 'in sickness and in health'" for her and her fiancé, a writer and adjunct professor:

As a theater artist working part-time jobs to support myself, I couldn’t afford to buy health insurance. And that didn’t worry me – I’m 32 and never had any health problems. I’ve always taken good care of myself: I do yoga, I ride a bike, and I eat well. 

Honestly, I decided to sign up for insurance through the Health Insurance Marketplace because I support the goal of expanding health coverage in this country, not because I thought I’d need it. I also convinced my fiancé, Diego Báez, who is a writer and adjunct professor, to enroll. 

My insurance started on January 1, and it’s a good thing, too. Soon after, I started feeling ill but didn’t think too much of it. Then on January 29, I was admitted to the hospital with a ruptured appendix and ended up having to stay in the hospital for 12 days. 

Without my new Marketplace plan, I don’t know how I would have been able to pay the cost of my care... 

My ruptured appendix was a wakeup call – for me and Diego. 

We’re getting married in September. This experience for us puts a new light on the phrase “in sickness and in health.”

    Hecht was able to find an HMO plan for only $56/month.  She assures others that signing up is "really easy to do," and urges them not to delay since the deadline is coming on March 31.  Healthcare.gov has had difficultly attracting healthy young people to enroll in Obamacare to widen the risk pool and keep premiums down.
    Ironically, it may be enrollees like Hecht that may lead to vastly increased Obamacare premiums in 2015 and beyond since her $56/month premium will cover only a tiny fraction of her 12 day hospital stay.  If Obamacare is going to have any chance of living up to its promise, the government will need to sign up a lot more young people in Hecht's under-35 demographic who spend a lot more time in health than in sickness.


Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

Widespread Vulnerability Found in Dozens of Government 'Open Data' Websites [Updated]

    At first glance, a page on the Health and Human Services (HHS) website seems to be giving that agency's official advice on the "The Health Benefits of Nootropics," a classification of purportedly memory-enhancing drugs.  The page is found on the website's subdomain of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) as part of the Health System Measurement Project.  The page contains the official logo of HHS, the domain in the URL ends with the legitimate HHS address containing "hhs.gov", and the "https://" indicates the connection is even a secure one.  Further down the page, there is even a link to a website selling related products.  A partial screenshot of the profile page at HHS.gov appears as follows:

    Similar pages on the site offer information and counsel on shampoo, surgery, and health issues suffered by computer users.  However, in spite of all the apparently reassuring elements and features of these pages, Health and Human Services had nothing to do with their creation or content, and does not recommend or endorse either the information or the linked products.

    Nevertheless, while the pages are not official HHS information, neither are they technically cases of hacking.  Rather, the creators have exploited a weakness in the "open data" system used by dozens of government websites.  The platform was developed by a company called Socrata.  The system allows users to create profiles and then manipulate data tables that various governments (federal, state, local) host on their websites.  The results can be shared with others for statistical analysis, research, and other purposes, as some users have done. However, in cases like the ones above, a profile page itself can be used to promote a product or information in a way that gives viewers the impression that the host government entity approves or even endorses.  A legitimate looking link could even be included in an email to direct recipients to what they may easily perceive as government-provided information.

    THE WEEKLY STANDARD first reported this opening in January when some internet marketers had created profiles at data.healthcare.gov, the federal government's Obamacare website.  Within a day  after the story ran, Healthcare.gov disabled public access to profiles created for its data site.  At the time, David Kennedy, the CEO of TrustedSec, an information security firm, remarked that the opening could allow scammers to fool users with a "website that’s legitimate to make them believe its something else," and that "an attacker can basically create a functioning website and host any content they want there and under the umbrella of healthcare.gov."

    Use of the profiles can be especially effective since the profiles contain no disclaimers that the government entity does not endorse the content, and there are no warnings when clicking on links that "you are now leaving the website for an external site", a common warning on government sites.

    Health and Human Services is not the only government agency at risk.  The White House announced "Project Open Data" in May 2013 with dozens of federal agencies and sub-agencies taking part.  As recently as January 14, the White House released a Fact Sheet on the White House Safety Datapalooza,  an initiative to safeguard government data that is "part of the Administration’s larger commitment to unleash the power of open data."

    Other examples of profiles such as the one above are numerous, including other federal agencies, plus state, county and local governments.  The products and information being pushed range from private loans to debt consolidation to even "artificial turf":

Cook County, Illinois

Data.gov,  General Services Administration

City of Boston

Honolulu, Hawaii

    Each of the pages above (and dozens of others discovered in the preparation of this story) contains a link to an external website that is obviously not an officially sanctioned site by the government host, but neither are there any disclaimers to warn potential viewers.  The pages appear to violate the Terms of Service of the Socrata platform since "[u]nsolicited promotions, political campaigning, advertising or solicitations" are prohibited.

    More malicious sites could be used for data harvesting or even identity theft since scammers are able to trade on the credibility conferred by the official government websites that host these profile pages.  THE WEEKLY STANDARD has no direct evidence that such activity has yet taken place via an "open data" website, but at this point, clearly the door is wide open to such abuse.  

   An email to an official at Data.gov seeking comment was referred to another official who has not yet responded.  An emailed request to Socrata for comment was initially returned Tuesday evening with a promise of a response, but so far, no additional response has been received.

UPDATE: By the end of the day on Thursday, public access to Socrata profiles had been disabled.  Clicking on links to the profiles now redirect users to a login page.  Neither the government nor Socrata ever acknowledged the vulnerability nor issued any statement regarding the issue despite earlier promises to respond.  Tim Cashman, a Senior Content Strategist at Socrata, initially responded to an email Tuesday night with a promise to "be in touch with a response shortly", and Steven Gottlieb, a Socrata PR contact, and Bill Glenn, VP of Marketing, were both cc'd on his reply.  Several followup emails to all three Socrata representatives, however, were ignored.

Note: A version of this post, before the update, first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

Feds' Climate Change Website Hacked By Online Drug Seller

    The website of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) was repeatedly hacked on Monday and Tuesday this week by an online drug retailer.  A Tuesday Google search of the site, www.globalchange.gov, revealed dozens of pages hawking everything from Xanax to Levitra to Ambien. A partial list is shown in the screen grab below:

    Clicking on the links immediately redirected users to a website called "HealthLife", which bills itself as "the leader in delivering medications throughout the world".  The site appears to be registered in the United States:

    While the links were redirects, a cached page (no longer available) revealed that the Global Change site itself contained unauthorized pages as well, such as this one:

    By Tuesday afternoon, the hacking had apparently been discovered and the unauthorized pages were deleted.
    The U.S. Global Change Research Program identifies itself as dealing not only with climate change, but "land productivity, oceans or other water resources, atmospheric chemistry, [and] ecological systems":

The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) is a Federal program that coordinates and integrates global change research across 13 government agencies to ensure that it most effectively and efficiently serves the Nation and the world. USGCRP was mandated by Congress in the Global Change Research Act of 1990, and has since made the world’s largest scientific investment in the areas of climate science and global change research.

    An email to the USGCRP requesting comment has not yet been returned.


Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

Opportunistic Marketers Exploit Opening at Healthcare.gov

    At least three marketers of health-related or insurance products and services have taken advantage of the "data-set" feature at Healthcare.gov to give themselves a virtual presence on the federal government's Obamacare site.  The ability to use a web address containing "healthcare.gov" may lend credibility and even imply endorsement by the government.  An informational website about schizophrenia called Schiz Life and a company hawking an anti-wrinkle skin product called Vivexin have both used the "profile" feature of data.healthcare.gov to introduce users to their services and products, as well as direct users to their respective websites.  A third profile even offers "universal life insurance" from No Exam Insurers.
    Here is an example of one of the profiles in question:

    The information is presented in a rather clinical fashion, but all the profiles contain links further down on the pages that direct users to websites where more information is given and, in some cases, products can be ordered.  There is no disclaimer anywhere on the profile pages that the information presented is not endorsed by Healthcare.gov, nor is there the customary warning found on many government websites that the pages contain "an external link that is not the responsibility of, or under the control of" the federal government.  

    The addresses of all three profile pages begin with "https://", which indicates a secure browser connection, providing further reassurance that the pages are a legitimate offering of the Obamacare site.  The "https://" is followed by "data.healthcare.gov", which is the domain also used for legitimate and intended purposes by the site's administrator and other registered users.  Thus, anyone could set up a similar profile (conceivably with more malicious purposes than these three sites appear to have) and proceed to advertise their data.healthcare.gov link on another website or in an email.  The Healthcare.gov address could easily influence the uninformed to believe that they are accessing government-sponsored webpages, leaving them wide open to "phishing" attacks where identity thieves extract personal and financial information from the unsuspecting.

    The three profiles described above appear to violate the terms of service of data.healthcare.gov which prohibits "Unsolicited promotions, political campaigning, advertising or solicitations."  However, at least one of the profiles has been around for weeks, possibly longer.  Also, there is evidence that a fourth profile promoting an anxiety-reducing and/or weight-loss product has been directly linked to by external websites.

    The "data-set" feature of Healthcare.gov was established to allow users to sort and present the health insurance plans and data used by the site in various ways that might be helpful to those looking for a plan or those researching trends and patterns in the health insurance marketplace.  The site provides details of the different ways the data can be manipulated and even published.  There are a number of apparently legitimate users who have established profiles and created their own data sets.  The profiles even include social-media-type features such as photos and "followers."  But as is the case everywhere on the internet, without adequate safeguards and monitoring, there are always those who will subvert the intended purpose of a given website if given an opening.  As the cost of Healthcare.gov approaches half a billion dollars, it is clear more money is not always the answer.  When it comes to earning the trust of the public, Healthcare.gov obviously has more work to do.

Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

State Department Buys Million Dollar Granite Sculpture from Irish-Born Artist

    At the end of September, the federal government's fiscal year was drawing to a close, the threat of a shut down was increasing, and the State Department was shopping for art.  Four contracts were awarded in the last two weeks of September, including $1,000,000 for a granite sculpture by Irish-born artist Sean Scully to be installed at the new U.S. Embassy in London.  Notice of the awards was posted Sunday afternoon of Thanksgiving weekend on the Federal Business Opportunities website.
    Although the form of the Scully sculpture is not identified in the award notification, the artist has produced granite sculptures before, including this one entitled "Wall of Light Cubed 2" in 2008:

    The remaining three awards include a bronze sculpture, "Flowers", by American artist Donald Baechler ($150,000), for the new U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan; a mosaic mural by Miotto Mosaic Art Studio in Carmel, NY ($150,000), for the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia, Brazil; and a work entitled "The Black Arch" by Saudi Arabian writer Raja Alem and artist Shadia Alem, for the new U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
    When asked for comment on the contract awards, a State Department official provided the intended destinations for the artwork, as well as the following statement:

The Department of State’s Office of Art in Embassies curates permanent and temporary exhibitions for U.S. embassy and consulate facilities. For the past five decades Art in Embassies has played a leading role in U.S. public diplomacy with a focused mission of cross-cultural dialogue and understanding through the visual arts and artist exchange.  Art in Embassies is a public-private partnership engaging over 20,000 participants globally, including artists, museums, galleries, universities, and private collectors, and encompasses over 200 venues in 189 countries.
The art pieces listed below will become part of the collections at diplomatic posts and in some cases, comply with host city planning requirements that art be incorporated within the design scheme and displayed in public spaces.  These pieces are permanent purchases, not on loan.

    The State Department's 2013 budget request included $2.5M for the Art in Embassies program.

UPDATE: A State Department official emails to say, "Sean Scully was born in Ireland, but is now an American." This post has been updated to reflect that fact.


Note: A version of this article first appeared at The Weekly Standard.http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/state-department-buys-million-dollar-granite-sculpture-irish-artist_769513.html