The contractor responsible for the troubled Hawaii Health Connector website is the same company the state hired 14 years ago to build a tax collection system that state officials say has never worked properly.

Canadian-based CGI Group Inc. was paid $87.5 million between 1999 and 2011 to modernize the Hawaii Department of Taxation’s collection system. Because of flaws in the system CGI built, the state is preparing to spend at least another $32 million to redo the project, Tax Department officials said.

"It’s crazy. We wasted $87 million in the previous contract," said Robert Su, the tax system modernization program manager for the state.

A briefing will be held today at 10 a.m. at the state Capitol for lawmakers to get a status update on the tax system.

Lawmakers are also questioning why the Hawaii Health Connector awarded CGI a $53 million contract in January, given the problems related to its work for the Tax Department. The online insurance marketplace failed to launch as scheduled Oct. 1 and has been experiencing difficulties since going live Oct. 15.

"I can’t believe after what we went through with CGI that (the Connector) would hire CGI," said Senate President Donna Mercado Kim (D, Kapalama-Alewa-Kalihi Valley). "I would want to get a company that had a good track record, not one that had a bad track record in our state. Let the evidence speak for itself. Look at all the problems with DOTAX and look at the problems with Obamacare."

Sen. David Ige (D, Pearl City-Momilani-Pearlridge), chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, will be chairing today’s legislative briefing on the tax modernization project.

"CGI never completed what the requirements were on the (tax) contract, so there was a whole bunch of functionality that was not provided," Ige said. "The system crashed all the time and never had full functionality. … They continuously have to reboot the system, put in patches and all kinds of things that limited the capability."

"Every time we have a tax measure, DOTAX comes in and says it’ll take them a year to 18 months to implement because the tax system is so old," Ige said. "It cannot interface with federal and other systems, so the state is not efficient or effective in collecting taxes."

Su, at the Tax Department, said the CGI technology was defective from the beginning and has never been able to generate accurate revenue accounting reports for state budgeting purposes. He said the department, which manages roughly $6 billion a year in tax revenues, manually generates the reports without automation.

"The state doesn’t know how much money we have," Su said.

Montreal-based CGI called the Hawaii tax project "a successful partnership" in a statement to the Star-Advertiser.

"Together, CGI and the state provided improved services to Hawaii’s taxpayers and increased revenues from delinquent taxes," said Linda Odorisio, a CGI spokeswoman in the Washington, D.C. area. The state collected more than $385 million in additional delinquent taxes that it would not have collected without the systems implemented by CGI, she said. The work CGI did also cut the time it takes to generate a tax refund to one to three weeks, down from four to six weeks, Odorisio added.

CGI is one of the world’s largest information technology firms, with 29,000 employees, including 70 who work in Hawaii out of a downtown Honolulu office.

When asked whether the Connector knew of the Tax Department’s experience with CGI and why the firm was chosen, Connector Executive Director Coral Andrews said in an email, "We completed a thorough vendor evaluation process as part of a competitive procurement. The procurement process complied with federal guidelines and oversight, board oversight and approval and in accordance with the Connector’s procurement policy."

She also said the Connector intends to hold vendors accountable for contract obligations.

Andrews has not disclosed how many actual enrollments have gone through the system since Oct. 15. A Connector spokesman couldn’t say when that information would be available.

The Connector call center operators said the marketplace — designed to match lower-income consumers with subsidized health plans — is still having problems with applicants not being able to enroll online.

CGI is also under fire for the poorly built federal health exchanges at HealthCare.gov, which is being used in 36 states.

At a hearing before Congress last month, officials of CGI blamed the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, which is responsible for implementing the Affordable Care Act, for failing to adequately test the system before its launch.

When asked about problems with the Hawaii Health Connector, Odorisio said, "The October launch was a milestone, not a finish line. The system is working as planned." Odorisio added that CGI is working to improve the stability and responsiveness of the system.

"Creating these marketplaces was an incredible undertaking," Odorisio said. "The process has been complex, challenging, and unprecedented. It’s a job that required tens of thousands of personnel hours, compliance with a complex set of regulations, coordination with multiple state and federal agencies, the deployment of new technology solutions, and integration with numerous federal and state IT systems."