DC Fires Tech Contractors, Puts Employees On Leave 51
theodp writes "After Gov. Tim Kaine intervened on his behalf, Vivek Kundra was quietly reinstated to his Federal CIO post on Tuesday after a brief leave following an FBI raid on Kundra's former DC office (Kundra was not implicated). Now, the Washington Post reports that the City of DC plans to fire 23 Technology Office contractors and place 4 employees on leave in the aftermath of the arrests of a Security manager and contractor on bribery charges last week. Another government employee has since been arrested for his role in the scam, and the mayor has promised that the tech office will undergo a 'full and formal review.'"
DC government is pointless (Score:2, Insightful)
It's really a shame that the U.S. government can't just annex DC and treat it as a federal protectorate. Treating it like a real city with a whole set of councilmen and a mayor just gives the mentally defective permanent residents of the city too much power to vote in corrupt government officials to rule over them.
Re: (Score:1)
Except geographically, the residents of DC differ from the general population...how?
Elections are just a set of declared variables. It is only a matter of whichever collection of fools > the the total number of fools elects whatever group of crooks/incompetents/egomaniacs wherever.
Re: (Score:1)
I went to school with an Indian immigrant. He got pulled over and was about to pay off the cop until his American friend warned him not to.
Re:DC government is pointless (Score:4, Insightful)
Neither can being a politician in a corrupt system. We must make people accountable for their actions once again.
Re: (Score:1)
They just need to learn the language of US graft better - i.e. Lobbyist and Special Interests
not Trolling - just sayin'...
However I have to disagree with your assessment of it being an adjustment to American culture... I've been a government contractor, and the vetting process is so comprehensive (not that its difficult or exclusive to be a Govt. contractor) - it is mere SO complex procedurally (documentation over documentation, etc) - and when
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The irony is that even with all those long-winded procedures, the results almost always fall very short of the goal. If all those double-checks and safeguards fail to actually improve service quality, then logic dictates the safeguards should be eliminated and redesigned from scratch.
If it's not helping, then it's just a waste of resources.
Re: (Score:1)
Double-checks and safeguards are put in place to keep control over who gets the contract (and the money). This is to make sure that the money ends up at the people who bribed the politicians, it has nothing to do with the actual results.
Re:DC government is pointless (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
When we followed proper procedure, we had to file and get approval of every weekly invoice with 3 different departments (the cabinet office which was the actual client, the executive branch accounting office and the D.O.D) - all of the late approvals put the billing (and the work schedules) behind on an
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Bribery as a cultural custom (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
DC is a federal protectorate.
Any type of home rule that DC residents get is at the whim of the federal government.
Don't like it? Change the US Constitution. At least if the Constitution means anything to you, anyway. (If you think DC should be represented at the federal level without having to change the US Constitution, quite frankly that means for you the US Constitution is meaningless...)
The seat of power in the US was deliberately NOT put in any state for some very good reasons.
Resolving the tax issue (Score:1)
I do understand the whole "taxation without representation" problem there, but I've always thought that D.C. folks were trying to resolve that in totally the wrong direction.
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
Sorry, but DC is a real city and its residents are no more "defective" than in any other place. Since you think local government is so pointless, why don't we just take your city, throw out the mayor, councilmen, etc., and take away your right to vote?
Re: (Score:2)
This isn't insightful, it's ignorant. Most of the country is ignorant, where DC local govenment is concerned.
DC local government is a puppet-state. It was created by Congress as a concession to silence the statehood movement, but they never really gave DC real local rule. Instead, the government is forced to kowtow to the whims of Congress, who holds the purse strings (just like the states) AND the dummy strings (NOT like the states).
Every time DC tries to stand up on it's own, Congress finds some way to
DC plans to fire 23 Technology Office contractors (Score:4, Funny)
Anybody want to hire a C programmer? I'll be available effective next Friday.
Re: (Score:1)
Anybody want to hire a C programmer? I'll be available effective next Friday.
Really? That sucks!
There's going to be a lot more layoffs in the next couple of months. The worst isn't over.
Contractors hiring other contractors... (Score:4, Informative)
"Sushil Bansal, the contractor who owns Advanced Integrated Technologies Corporation."
"Seventeen of the contractors work for AITC"
That's where the problems lies - a contractor hiring other contractors through his own company. Interferes with the proper chain of management and encourages bad practices and fraud.
Last year recently turned down a contract at a very large supplier to a UK government agency in part because I was being compelled to work through the company owned by one of the other contractors on the project. From colleagues on the project I heard that the guy was a hard task master and never allowed his team to engage in any upfront design work. Of course they did what he asked because he was paying them directly, when they should have acted more professionally and insisted on some proper design work.
A year later - he's been let go, not sure what's happened to the people who worked through him - and the project is collapsing.
Parent isn't flamebait (Score:5, Insightful)
We've got four basic possibilities here:
1. Kundra was actively involved in the fraud.
2. Kundra knew about the fraud and did nothing about it.
3. Kundra didn't know about the fraud.
4. Kundra knew about the fraud and reported it to police.
We know the fourth isn't true - the investigation was started when they tried to bribe a contractor.
The first two mean that Kundra is corrupt and not fit for office. The third means that Kundra is incompetent and not fit for office.
Since we've eliminated the fourth possibility, all the remaining possibilities mean that Kundra is not fit for office.
While parent was over the top (Score:3, Interesting)
I do agree with your assessment.
Something was seriously wrong in that office and for Kundra to not be a participant or not even know leaves me wondering why he is still going to hold a position in President Obama's administration. Obama's vetting process sucks to say the least, worse is the pass too many get in the press till the vast right wing conspiracy stirs up enough dust on radio to force the printed press to jump
Re: (Score:2)
We've got four basic possibilities here:
1. Kundra was actively involved in the fraud.
2. Kundra knew about the fraud and did nothing about it.
3. Kundra didn't know about the fraud.
4. Kundra knew about the fraud and reported it to police.
We know the fourth isn't true - the investigation was started when they tried to bribe a contractor.
The first two mean that Kundra is corrupt and not fit for office. The third means that Kundra is incompetent and not fit for office.
Since we've eliminated the fourth possibility, all the remaining possibilities mean that Kundra is not fit for office.
Well analysed.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
He stole some dress shirts from JC Penney for a total of $134. He was 21 at the time. Youthful and dumb not an extortionist like Blago.
And I don't see how what Kundra did at 21 really makes Obama like Blago either. Or are you suggesting that Obama chose him for his sterling petty thievery skills? Awesome, we should send him to every JC Penney around the world to steal shirts. That will fix the economy.
Not saying we shouldn't hit Obama, but this seems pretty small next to everything else going on. Why smokes
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
He stole some dress shirts from JC Penney for a total of $134. He was 21 at the time. Youthful and dumb not an extortionist like Blago.
And I don't see how what Kundra did at 21 really makes Obama like Blago either. Or are you suggesting that Obama chose him for his sterling petty thievery skills? Awesome, we should send him to every JC Penney around the world to steal shirts. That will fix the economy.
Not saying we shouldn't hit Obama, but this seems pretty small next to everything else going on. Why smokescreen good questions with stuff like this? The RIAA has some control within the DoJ and you're worried about what Kundra did at 21? Obama needs dissent thrown his way, but can we at least make sure that what we're screaming is really important?
21 is an adult.
So, do you really think an adult who thinks it's OK to steal belongs in government? Because he sure as shit thought laws didn't apply to him when he was 21. What lesson did he learn from that? "Don't steal", or "Don't get caught"? Given the pattern of Kundra's life, my bet is on "Don't get caught".
Age 21: Kundra busted for shoplifting
Age ?: Entire office Kundra led busted for corruption, Kundra "not implicated"
Sure looks like the lesson he learned from that shoplifting conviction was "D
Re: (Score:1)
Kundra sounds like a great manager (Score:4, Interesting)
With a massive scandal like this, if he wasn't involved and didn't know he couldn't have been all that involved with his office.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Really... how could the director of the department how no idea what was going on w/ the contracting? Uhh... that IS his job. Lord knows the guy wasn't doing any *real* work like architecture.
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
About the "youthful indiscretion", from Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]: "In 1997, at age 22, Kundra pleaded guilty to a petty theft charge for stealing dress shirts from a JC Penney store in Maryland. He was fined $500, but the sentence was suspended, and he only had to pay $100 plus court costs; he also was sentenced to 80 hours of community service." (source: New York Daily News [nydailynews.com])
Coiuld have been worse. Nobody died like in Teddy Kennedy's youthful indiscretion [ytedk.com].
Virginia, here we go again (Score:1, Informative)
This story falls in line with my experience working in the Commonwealth of VA. Which is: Local sub getting defrauded on state and local government projects by out of state corporation under the protection of state government employees. I had this happen twice to the company I worked at within a year, and I cannot say how happy I am to be out of there. I am still in awe about the widespread incompetence, opportunism and evil intent in that part of the country.
Advise: When representatives of the Attorney Gene
Re: (Score:2)
In my experience, when someone says its 'XXX political party' thats the problem, they don't have a clue.
People are stupid. They think the sports team, errr, political party ... they are cheering for is somehow different than all the rest.
As soon as someone says 'the democrats' or 'the republicans' then you can safely assume their opinion is for all intents and purposes, worthless as they are more concerned with 'team pride' than the actual matters at hand. And that my friend is why the goverment is like i
Contractorors get exploited everywhere (Score:1, Interesting)
I am contracting at a major Canadian bank. The Sr. VP and CIO of the company have no clue that than an AVP has a brother who owns a placement/contracting firm. I am the only guy on that development project who hasn't come from that agency. I am kept around as exihbit A , to be paraded whenever someone begins to get curious about this department's hiring policy. I dont piss off the AVP and my contract gets renewed every six months.
My point is that hiring process is inherently corruptible and dumb. I am g
Just about every IT manager (Score:1, Insightful)
I would say that I would have to fire just about every single IT manager I have worked for in the last 20 years if I was a CEO. Kickbacks, favors
etc are a huge problem in every IT organization I have ever been in. If I am ever find myself to be in a position as CEO I would imagine
I would be firing quite a few IT managers. I would have a few rather simple rules, a vendor comes to your office for a meeting, no outside
the office meetings etc. If given anything of value of more than 1 dollar you shall return it
Re: (Score:2)
Those rules you proffer are just too easy to game. Anyone can find 'bad' vendors who only charge list prices and thus can be easily eliminated in favor of the preferred vendor. And even when it works, vendors themselves deliberately make it difficult to create competing bids that are apples-apples comparisons or obfuscate their facts to bury hidden costs or charges that don't show up until later.
And even when it all more or less works right, you can end up with a procurement process that's so time consumi