When it comes to government work, many of the top tech companies in the world get involved in order to work on it. The reason behind it is simple. If a company manages to deliver great work, then there is the possibility of getting even more work from the government, and more often than not, it is a steady flow of lucrative contracts. In this regard, IBM has always been one of the biggest players and has worked with the different arms of the United States government for decades. However, it seems that IBM ran into a lot of troubles when it was contracted by the State of Maryland to build an online platform for medicines.
The company’s Irish Curam Software was used to build the website, but in an unfortunate turn of events, the website crashed on the day on which it was launched. The dispute was as much to do with the fact that the Maryland Health Insurance Agency website had crashed as with the usage of Curam software that had been used to build the whole thing. The United States Attorney’s office made an announcement that the tech giant has agreed to pay $15 million after the False Claims Act had been invoked in the allegations against IBM and its Irish unit.
IBM did not admit to any liability and actually went on to state that the United State’s government’s claims were not on solid ground. The government refused to concede that its accusations were without any merit, as suggested by IBM. The subsidiary Curam Software had been bought by IBM for 100 million Euros back in 2011, and it seemed like a shrewd purchase considering the fact that the Irish company had worked extensively with governments. It was hence natural when Curam was one of the contractors for the Maryland website. However, it all went up in smoke as the website in question crashed on the very day on which it was crashed. It is not surprising that the government decided to sue IBM.