A Montreal-based information technology giant has found itself in the middle of an uproar over glitches in the newly-launched Obamacare website, with some pundits ready to blame Canada. CGI Federal, a division of CGI Group, the world's sixth-largest IT firm, holds the principal contract to develop and run the federal HealthCare.gov website. The site hosts the health care exchanges where Americans in 36 U.S. states can sign up for subsidized health care. (The remaining states are building their own health care exchanges.) The U.S. government has paid CGI at least $88 million U.S. to build and support the federal exchange, the Washington Post reports. But glitches plagued the CGI-built website from the moment it launched Oct. 1. "Blank boxes where security questions are supposed to appear. Pleas to 'be patient.' Error messages galore. Notices that 'the system is busy right now.' Web pages timing out before they load. Garbled lines of text riddled with stray question marks," Reuters reported. And the glitches had a substantial impact. According to an AP-GfK poll, three-quarters of visitors to the site reported problems signing up.

• published: 11 Oct 2013
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