City Desk » OCTO

Too Hot for D.C. Government!

Alex Baca — Tue, 31 May 2011 14:09:37 +0000

The Office of the Chief Technology Officer wants you to watch your mouth.

Send an offensive word in an email to a city government employee, to be received at a "dc.gov" email address, and you'll be censored. The message will bounce back with a note that says, "Your recent message for [email address] titled [email subject] contains unacceptable words or phrases. Please contact OCTO Citywide Messaging for assistance or re-word your message."

The filter is well-intentioned: It blocks spam and other malicious or inappropriate messages from city email addresses. But it also applies to humans, should they choose to use uncouth language toward a D.C. government employee via email.

Ayanna Smith, OCTO's public information officer, says that despite the friendly offer in the receipt, no one has approached her for help with rewording a message—in fact, Smith wasn't aware of the receipt until Washington City Paper inquired what words would trigger it. At the Citywide Messaging office, an OCTO employee says she had never received any requests to help reword an email.

The same employee (requesting anonymity because she isn't authorized to speak to the press) says the filter could be expanded if spammers—or real humans looking to contact D.C. government employees—become increasingly lewd.

So, what words might cause you to receive a gentle reminder from OCTO requesting that you reword your email? The official list:

asshole
fucking
c0ck
chinaman
dego
pussy
dago
honkie
honkey
honky
penis
fuq
jigaboo
fuck
nigga
nigger
ejaculate
fucked
shit
pussie
bastard
fucked-up
motherfucker
bitch
slut
sluts
whore
f\*u\*c\*k
fuck-up
d1ck
vagina
cocksucker
cocked
cunt
pen1s
ejaculation
pu$$y
fucker
fuckked
cock
dik
jackoff

New D.C. Chief Technology Officer Is Bryan Sivak

Mike DeBonis — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:42:37 +0000

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has again raided the private sector for an agency head: Bryan D. Sivak, 34, is his new chief technology officer.

Sivak replaces interim CTO Chris Willey, who in turn replaced Vivek Kundra, who exited the Fenty administration for a top federal job in the Office of Management and Budget.

Like transportation director Gabe Klein, Sivak is coming from well outside the governmental sphere. He is a founder of software firm InQuira—an Silicon Valley outfit that has done projects for the like of Nokia, T-Mobile, and the British Ministry of Defense. This will be Sivak's first stint living in the District.

"I'm more of an innovator than anything else," he said at a One Judiciary Square press conference this morning.

Breaking: OCTO Contractors to Be Fired

Mike DeBonis — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:25:16 +0000

LL is hearing word that the city today is moving to end contracts with Advanced Integrated Technology Corp.—the outfit until recently headed by Sushil Bansal, charged last week in the tech corruption scandal—and two other companies alleged to be associated with the fraud. LL has no confirmation of the companies' identities, but Innovative IT Solutions Inc. and Circle Networks were both named in a federal affidavit supporting last week's arrests.

AITC has garnered $13 million in city contracts since 2004, LL reported Friday. Between 20 and 30 employees of the three contractors will be affected, LL understands.

More to come.

UPDATE, 1:30 P.M.: Shahwanaz Samdar, an executive at AITC, says he's unaware of any developments. "We haven't heard anything. It's business as normal here."

UPDATE, 1:40 P.M.: WaPo confirms that Circle and Innovative are the two other companies; David Nakamura and Elissa Silverman also peg the number of affected employees at 23.

What Vivek Kundra Has to Answer For

Mike DeBonis — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 19:51:59 +0000

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."

LL Breaks Down the OCTO Allegations

Mike DeBonis — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:08:38 +0000

LL's spent the last couple of hours poring though the affidavit filed by federal authorities in support of the arrests made today in connection with OCTO corruption.

Here's the headlines:

The whole scheme was laid bare thanks to the cooperation of an OCTO employee who was introduced into the scheme last March by Yusuf Acar. The employee went to the FBI in August.
The dollar amount stolen is uncertain, but a company established to collect Acar's illicit earnings took in almost $300,000. The affidavit highlights suspicious transactions totaling over $600,000.
Acar said in a taped phone call he was prepared to leave for Turkey and intimated he was stashing money for that possibility.
Several other unnamed current or former OCTO employees are implicated in the scheme in various ways. Two of them have connections to the Office of the Chief Financial Officer—home of the $50M tax scandal uncovered in 2007.
The scheme took two forms: ghost payrolling and inflated purchase orders.
Acar had tapped into District e-mail systems and was intercepting e-mail traffic to and from the Office of the Inspector General in order to monitor whether they had gotten wind of his schemes.

Still want more? You could read the whole thing [PDF] or you could just read these highlights:

—Yusuf Acar was involved in multiple schemes to defraud the District government: "In one scheme, a quantity of goods is ordered by OCTO....The vendor actually orders a lesser number of the item from the distributor, but bills the DC government for the full amount originally requested by OCTO. An OCTO official, such as YUSUF ACAR, falsely certifies that the greater quantity was actually received and the vendor bills the District of Columbia Government for the greater amount and is paid accordingly. The co-conspirators then split the proceeds of the crime. A second scheme involves billing for 'ghost employees'. These are contract employees supposedly hired by a vendor, such as AITC, to perform work under a specific contract for OCTO. However, these ghost employees never actually perform any work under the contract. The vendor, who is involved in the scheme, bills the DC government for the employees' hours. An OCTO official, such as YUSUF ACAR, approves the timesheet so that the vendor can be paid. The money is then split between the co-conspirators."

—"In a recorded conversation on December 10, 2008, YUSUF ACAR states in part, regarding the risk of getting caught, "I mean, I will jump on the next plane, go to Turkey and disappear. That's fine." YUSUF ACAR has also stated that he is trying to move approximately $200,000 in cash out of the country to Turkey via diplomatic pouch."

—Several other entities and OCTO employees are names as being involved in the conspiracies.

Innovative IT Solutions Inc., a contractor that has occupied office space adjacent to AITC for years and used to sublet from AITC. Last year, IITS did about $220,000 in business with OCTO.
Circle Networks Inc. "did approximately $2.2 million in business with the DC government," even though Acar was listed on several documents as having an ownership stake in the company. This was apparently the entity which collected Acar's ill-gotten gains, which totaled about $200,000.
ALLNET Systems is a company, owned by a current OCTO employee, "S.E.," currently applying for cetrified business enterprise status with the D.C. government. The complaint alleges that Acar colluded with "S.E." to use this company as part of his schemes.
Network Osiris is owned by a former OCTO employee, "F.A.," now working for the Office of the Chief Financial Officer, and his wife, "S.A." "F.A." used to work with Acar. "ACAR and F.A. generally divided their territory and kept their activities separate, that is, ACAR dealt with contractors, and F.A. dealt with equipment. However, there were times when they worked together to steal money. CW heard that F.A.'s wife had been used as part of a "ghost employee" scheme. Bank records show that F.A. and S.A. both received payments from AITC via direct deposit into an account in the name of Network Osiris from October 2005 to April 2007."
"T.S." is an OCTO employee who used to work for OCFO. She is thought to have knowingly processed false invoices. In a recorded phone call, Acar says that Bansal "basically...take cares of her."
"W.M." is an OCTO employee reporting to Acar. According to the informant, Acar has said that this fellow "is involved and aware" of illicit purchases.
The informant is also an OCTO employee and an Army veteran; he went to the FBI last summer after Acar asked him to join his schemes earlier that year. "[I]n his role as a seeming co-conspirator, [the informant] has also received payment in these schemes," which is in control of the FBI.

—The affidavit details one scheme where an employee, "Eric," leaves OCTO, then Acar and Bansal conspire together with the onformant to cintue to collect his earnings. This causes a conflict, when Acar feels he should get more of the money than Bansal because he (and the informant) are taking on more risk. Says Acar to the informant, "This is beginning, okay? This is just like uh a scratch on the surface. We have a six million dollars. Six million mother [expletive] dollars. You and I should make at least three of that....So, that said, that said. I don’t want to [expletive] you know, you know go halfsies with this, this [expletive]." Later, Acar and the informant would engage in another ghost-employee scheme, hiring an undercover FBI agent as the "ghost." In a third instance, Acar had a position being filled under another company's contract transferred to AITC; the position was then "ghosted," according to the indictment. Later, Acra, Bansal, and the informant conspire to have that position extended in order to squeeze even more money out of it.

—In one illicit purchasing scheme, AITC submitted a quote for 2,000 licenses for some security software, but only contracts with the software provider for 500 licenses. This scheme, too, causes a conflict between Acar and Bansal over just how much of a percentage Bansal deserves—leading to an uncomfortable phone conversation between the informant and Bansal when a check the informant gets turns out to be smaller than he expected.

—Acar, according to the affidavit, was monitoring e-mails being sent and received by the D.C. Office of the Inspector General. In early February, Acar had apparently captured an e-mail containing names of the conspirators. The informant learned and expressed concern about the scheme to Acar, who told him, "I have a rule set anything between OCTO IP range and, and OIG IP range, I capture....Not only capture, and then he runs another rule, that captures data. It queries certain names, my name, your name, our people's name … some like common names and it pulls up, it gives me the actual daily report." The informant expressed relief, and Acar said, "So, so when I saw it I was like, what the [expletive], what's going on [laughter]?...Are we going to jail? (Laughter)"

City Authorized $13M in Payments to Charged Contractor

Mike DeBonis — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:27:59 +0000

LL's been eyeballing city purchase orders this afternoon, trying to suss out some more information about Sushil Bansal (pictured), arrested in connection to the OCTO corruption probe, and his company, Advanced Integrated Technologies Corp. (AITC).

Long story short, they've done a lot of business with the city.

According to publicly downloadable city records—thanks, Vivek!—the city has authorized more than 160 payments to AITC since 2004 totaling over $13 million. That's quite a bit more city business than the $350,000 reported by WTOP earlier.

Most of those purchase orders—more than $10 million worth—were submitted by OCTO; in addition, the Department of Motor Vehicles submitted $1.1 million (AITC had done work on DMV's Destiny computer system), and the transportation department submitted a $97,500 contract in 2005. About $1.7 million in payments were authorized for "equipment leases." (Note that just because the payments have been authorized doesn't mean they've thus far been paid in full; work could still be underway or yet to start or the contracts could have been modified.)

AITC's city earnings have been steadily on the rise. In 2004, the District submitted $612,058 in purchase orders to be paid to the company. In 2005, that figure rose to $1,583,888, and in 2006, rose still further to $2,799,426. In March 2007, Vivek Kundra took the reins at OCTO; AITC billings stayed fairly level that year, at $2,824,191. In 2008, however, AITC's city business nearly doubled, to $5,062,096. So far in 2009, city agencies have submitted three contracts with the company totaling about $300,000.

Another city database lists 14 positions filled since November by AITC under OCTO's Information Technology Staff Augmentation program. For two of those positions, both systems-security-related, the person was to report to Yusuf Acar, the OCTO employee arrested early this morning.

Breaking: FBI Raids OCTO Offices

Mike DeBonis — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:35:39 +0000

Per WTOP's Mark Segraves and his Twitter feed, FBI agents are searching the Office of the Chief Technology Officer's executive suite located at One Judiciary Square. It's unclear at this point which particular office or which particular OCTO employee the feds might be targeting.

All of the OCTO employees on the premises have been sent home. "Administrative leave," is what LL is told.

CTO Vivek Kundra, you might remember, was recently tapped by Barack Obama for a high federal post. There is no indication that he or anyone particular person is under investigation.

UPDATE, 10:50 A.M.: Says a spokesperson for the FBI's Washington field office: "It's an ongoing investigation...I can't confirm anything at this time."

UPDATE, 11:15 A.M.: Segraves is reporting an arrest: "Yusuf Acar, 40, was taken into custody this morning by FBI agents at his home in Northwest Washington" in connection with a "federal bribery sting."

UPDATE, 11:30 A.M.: WaPo has a brief item up: "Acar serves as an information systems security officer in the D.C. government." No comment from U.S. Attorney, mayor.

Agency source tells LL, "Somebody like him has access to a whole bunch of shit."

This morning, OCTO personnel were told by acting CTO Tommy Jones not to access office computer systems, lest they engage in obstruction of justice.

UPDATE, 11:45 A.M.: Segraves is reporting a second arrest: Sushil Bansal.

Acar had been listed on numerous city contract proposals as "contracting officer's technical representative," indicating a central role in the OCTO contracting process.

UPDATE, 11:50 A.M.: D.C. Wire found a video of Acar:

UPDATE, 12 P.M.: ABC's Jake Tapper has scene of Acar's arrest.

UPDATE, 1:40 P.M.: Acar has been employed by the city as a "information technology specialist" since November 2004. He'd been making $127,468. Bansal isn't listed in the District's personnel system, says mayoral spokesperson Mafara Hobson, likely because he was working as an independent contractor.

A statement from federal and District authorities, Hobson says, will likely come this afternoon.

UPDATE, 2:20 P.M.: The relationships are beginning to clarify: Bansal is CEO of Advanced Integrated Technologies Corp., which, according to WTOP, "received .Net Development Support and Peoplesoft Consulting Support contracts from the D.C. Office of the Chief Technology Office totaling $350,000" and "has also received contracts from the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles."

Acar and Bansal are scheduled to be arraigned in federal court this afternoon.

UPDATE, 2:30 P.M.: Thus far there is nothing to indicate that Kundra is directly involved in this investigation, but here's is one nexus between the former CTO and those charged: Kundra years ago did a stint at Virginia megacontractor SAIC as consultant working on projects with the Department of Health and Human Services. Bansal's AITC lists an alliance with SAIC and did work for HHS. Thin stuff, but there it is.

UPDATE, 2:40 P.M.: Here's a pic of Bansal, from a 2007 Voice of America tech story:

Schwartz Aide Moves to OCTO

Mike DeBonis — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 22:03:21 +0000

They call it "burrowing in"—when government employees in politically appointed posts move into civil-service jobs as political fortunes shift.

That's what a lot folks working for Republicans are doing right now in the federal government. And, at the District level, there's some burrowing, too.

Nyasha Smith, who clerked the workforce development and government operations committee for outgoing At-Large Councilmember Carol Schwartz, has started a new job at the Office of the Chief Technology Officer. She's now chief of staff to agency head Vivek Kundra.

OCTO, along with five zillion other District organs, used to be under Smith's purview as committee clerk. Before working for Schwartz, Smith did a stint as legislative counsel on Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry's staff. (This is neither here nor there, but Smith's move would certainly be felicitous should Barry take a portion of Schwartz' committee portfolio, as LL has speculated he will.)

Smith did not immediately return a call for comment. LL sends out a friendly note to you HR types: If you're in need of a devoted public servant or two, give Carol's office a call—724-8105!