by Anita Baffoni, WPRO News
Governor Gina Raimondo’s decision to attend a Deloitte-sponsored event in California last week drew critics, including former Governor Lincoln Chafee who took to WPRO’s airwaves Tuesday with Tara Granahan.
“It’s hard to believe she went to the Deloitte-sponsored conference,” Chafee said in a phone interview. “It doesn’t take a Rhodes Scholar to say that’s not good optics.”
The event was called “Girls Who Code” which is a program that offers options for schools to expand computer science education. Raimondo was invited months ago to showcase Rhode Island’s CS4RI computer science initiative.
Raimondo said late on Tuesday she did not know Deloitte was involved until about one week before the event. When she did find out Deloitte’s CEO Janet Foutty would be there, Raimondo said she took that opportunity to sit down with her to express disappointment with the product and their performance. Deloitte is the lead vendor on UHIP, the state’s new social services eligibility computer system.
“I let her know they let us down, that we felt misled by them, that the product they provided us was an embarrassment to them and wasn’t what they told us they would provide us with,” Raimondo said. “I told them [Foutty] I expected them to make it right without any additional cost, I’m withholding payments and we need to renegotiate the contract.”
Raimondo added that Deloitte’s CEO personally pledged they would fix the system, give the necessary resources to do so and do it as quickly as they could.
Thousands of Rhode Islanders are facing benefit payment delays since the system went live in September.
“The coincidence is kind of unbelievable but I wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to sit with her and advocate for Rhode Island,” Raimondo said.
Raimondo attended the summit just days after a press conference highlighting findings of a 30-day report on challenges with UHIP where she said legal action may be taken against Deloitte, if warranted.
