Tech

Obama campaign donor heads firm that built Obamacare’s website

Josh Peterson Tech Editor
Font Size:

President Barack Obama received financial support for his re-election campaign from a senior executive of the firm that built Obamacare’s dysfunctional healthcare.gov website.

George Schindler — President, U.S. and Canada, of CGI Group, the Canadian parent company of U.S. subsidiary, CGI Federal — donated $1,000 to Obama’s reelection campaign in Aug. 2012, according to OpenSecrets.org.

By that time, CGI Federal had already been awarded the contract to build the exchange for nearly a year, according to a congressional testimony given by CGI Federal senior vice president Cheryl Campbell.

Seven months prior to Schindler’s donation, he participated in a White House forum on insourcing American jobs.

Schindler also donated $1,000 to Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign in July 2011, and $1,000 to the reelection campaign of Virginia Democratic Rep. Jim Moran in March 2011.

He also donated numerous times to CGI Technologies and Solutions, Inc. PAC – CGI Group’s political action group that donates to the campaigns of Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate.

Schindler also donated $2,300 to the campaign of Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain while he was running for president.

According to his bio, Schindler was president of CGI Federal from 2006 – 2011. In 2011, he was promoted to president of U.S. operations for CGI Group. In January 2013, he became president of U.S. and Canada for CGI.

Prior to joining CGI Group, he served as a vice president at American Management Systems (AMS), a technology and management consulting firm acquired by CGI Group in 2004.

AMS was co-founded in 1970 by Charles Rosotti and several of his Defense Department colleagues. Rosotti was later appointed IRS Commissioner under President Bill Clinton.

CGI Federal did not respond to The Daily Caller’s request for comment.

The Daily Caller previously reported that the while Obama was on the 2008 presidential campaign trail, he praised CGI Federal for creating jobs in Lebanon, Virginia.

The Washington Examiner reported Tuesday evening that CGI Federal’s executives also had extensive access to the White House prior to the Department of Health & Human Service’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) awarded the firm with the contract to build the Obamacare exchange.

Executives included Schindler, Campbell, and current CGI Federal President Donna Ryan – who visited the White House six times prior to CGI Federal receiving the contract from CMS.

The Daily Caller previously reported that the White House took down White House visitor logs previously accessible from WhiteHouse.gov, faulting Congress and the government shutdown as the excuse for introducing opacity to the White House’s visitor history.

When visitors attempt to access the visitor logs through the White House website, they are greeted with a message that states, “This dataset is currently private.”

Following the debacle over the Administration’s federal exchange, however, the removal of the White House visitor logs also served to conceal the close relationship between CGI Federal’s executives and the Obama administration.

CMS recently denied allegations the agency only reviewed one bid — a bid from CGI Federal — prior to awarding the firm the contract to design and build the exchange.

Follow Josh on Twitter and Facebook