What Vivek Kundra Has to Answer For
As LL has said repeatedly, there is not evidence that former Chief Technology Officer Vivek Kundra was in any way directly involved in the graft that allegedly happened under his nose. But it did happen under his nose.
So here's a question: Where was the oversight?
Kundra gave assurances that he was directly involved in the approval of procurements—ostensibly including the Acar's alleged falsified procurements. These assurances came in a December 2007 D.C. Council hearing held in the aftermath of the Office of Tax and Revenue scam. According to a D.C. Council committee report, "Mr. Kundra testified that his staff meets weekly to approve all procurements, regardless of size, with all relevant parties including the Program Management Officer, procurement and finance groups."
Here's another question: Did Kundra's initiatives lessen the opportunity for oversight? One of Kundra's pet projects was something called the IT Staff Augmentation Contract, where an outfit called OST Global was hired last August on a $75 million contract to quickly hire tech staff to do various jobs for OCTO.
Now the ghost-payrolling schemes detailed in the federal affidavit seem not to have been connected to ITSA; two ghost employees seem to have been placed as part of a $211,000 traditionally procured contract awarded to an Herndon outfit called Steel Cloud. But the company belonging to Sushil Bansal, charged yesterday, placed at least two employees under the new system, which has been in place since October.
Here's what Kundra told the D.C. Council about ITSA last summer: "we made temporary IT staffing services a top priority for reform and formed a cross-functional team to find a best practice solution for the District. Over the course of the last year, 10 people researched all 50 states and found that contracts similar to the one we have developed are bringing excellent value, control, and transparency." In June, he had assured councilmembers of "constant monitoring, oversight and random audits of both the vendor and program performance."
5:21 pm
CYA OCTO BS, NO ID GD PC DC incompetents, BO SNAFU.
3:16 pm
His direct report employee - Viveks security expert - pulled secure email and reporting information from the electronic information stream between the inspector general's office and OCTO to trace who might be onto their scheme. He monitored his name and his co-conspiritor's names as well as all of the ficticious company names. This happened in Viveks office right under his nose. Unbelievable.
4:56 pm
It does indeed make one wonder.
So, what are the major DC government scandals since Williams was first elected (the modern era)?
DC DMV;
Tax scandal (office of tax and revenue)
OCTO;
Noncharge of appropriate tax rate of vacant properties (just uncovered this in a Google search), loss of approx $65 million;
Nongovernmental: Teachers' union
What am I missing?
9:21 pm
It's fortunate that Vivek Kundra's agenda for transparency within the government is exactly what helped reveal the corruption therein.
Do we really want to push people who are helping uncover corruption out of the upper levels of government? What sort of message is this sending?
All of this didn't happen UNDER his nose, it was uncovered BECAUSE of his nose, because of his initiatives. That is my understanding.
1:51 am
This guy needs to resign immediately and stop bringing obama down with him.
He's not a genius -- He proposes shit like lets have dc.gov be searchable by google, WOW _ who cares
He needs to go back to learning and maybe come back in 10 years.
And NeoThomas, you are wrong. This was uncovered because of a good samaritan not because of Kundra. He is a bad manager.
11:16 am
It was not his sstrive for transparency that exposed this corruption, but an informant. Mr. Kundra during his entire tenure made the budget of the office impossible to to read, borrowed money from funds for other projects for projects not yet approved (the One Card --which was actually three cards is a good example).
He felt that the procurement process and all that tedious paperwork hindered his productivity. That same disdain for controls is what let to what happened. This is also a problem as there are still contractors who are managing contracts--not employees. Who was doing the basic oversight on the inventory (supposedly computerized) and the hours worked? How come there was no line manager signing off not only on the hours but the quality of work--oh yeah that is part of that stremlining he did.
The ITSA contract went through Council approved for $150 million, the Administration voluntarily agreed to limit it to 75 million, an agreement they can change at anytime. Yet Mr. Kundra himself was bypassing ITSA on favored contractors so he could pay them a higher rate.
4:57 pm
With many of the technology contracts of large agencies and corporations being outsourced and/or administered by what is seemingly a preponderance of non-Americans, how safe are we from having the security of vital information compromised? The principals in this investigation, I believe, are either from South Asia or Turkey.
1:40 pm
he is a shitty and shady fella. met him once dont want to again