US State Dept. Loses Anti-Terrorist Program Laptops

Stony Stevenson writes "It has surfaced that the US State Department can't account for up to about 1,000 laptops, perhaps as many as 400 of which belonged to the department's Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program. Internal auditors found that the department lost track of $30 million worth of computer equipment, 'the vast majority of which... perhaps as much as 99 percent,' were laptops, according to one official. Another official calculated that the average State Department laptop costs US$3,000 and figured that meant as many as 1,000 laptops might be astray — not 10,000 laptops as the US$30 million figure suggests. They're obviously not very good at maths."

Comments

$3000 for a laptop??

[piojo]

A state department laptop costs an average of $3000? That's completely insane! No (non-gaming) laptop costs that much unless you're just trying to burn money. This further reduces my faith in the abilities of the national government (and makes me feel really great about my taxes). =/

Re:$3000 for a laptop??

[mazarin5]

I presume that price includes software, created by government contractors at high price for a specific purpose, divided amongst the few thousand computers that have it installed.

Re:$3000 for a laptop??

[Chris Mattern]

It's not like they have repurchase the same software for the replacement computers.

Haven't dealt with Microsoft lately, have we?

Re:$3000 for a laptop??

[Vellmont]

A state department laptop costs an average of $3000? That's completely insane!

I'm not sure I'd start jumping up and down just yet. You're basing this all one one minor fact that some dumb journalist likely got wrong, or took out of context. And as we all know, journalists never make factual errors except when you have personal knowledge of the story.

Re:Math issues resolved

[TripMaster Monkey]

Actually, an hour and 40 minutes, for the whole bunch.

MOD PARENT UP

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

I was about to reply with the same thing. This is yet another example of why it is ridiculous to say it is better to "just let the government handle it". Not only is there no incentive to be cost-effective, secure, OR efficient, but the exact opposite becomes the case - government employees get their jobs through friends and family, ie cronyism, so because they did not need to prove their competence to get their jobs, there is also no incentive for them to be competent in their positions.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Abcd1234]

This is yet another example of why it is ridiculous to say it is better to "just let the government handle it"

You are correct. In some cases. But only a blind fool would believe that's universally true.

Re:eBay?

[The Angry Mick]

I'd try employee house visits.

Broken Window Fallacy

[corsec67]

The parable of the broken window might be of interest to you as to why this is a bad idea.

You are saying "it is ok to steal from people if that money is going to be used to buy other things", right?

Re:Why don't they handcuff the laptops to the user

[rts008]

Yes, at first thought that works, but then we would see gov't. employees missing along with the laptop.
My solution would be to chain the employees to a welded down desktop so the whole building would have to be lost/misplaced/sold in a pawn shop.

After seeing SO many of these articles, I can only surmise that giving them laptops in the first place is a poor choice.

Re:Blame Iran

[Foobar of Borg]

Whos president, theirs or ours?

The one who says random, crazy shit and thinks he has a personal line to God.

Re:great...

[atraintocry]

I'm gonna go with "lots of people helped themselves to laptops knowing that there isn't much oversight for the 'war on terror'" on this one.

Re:$3000?

[TheLink]

"She was useless"
"just that she was nothing more than a figurehead for the company so we could get more contracts"

If that meant you actually got more contracts then she was not useless at all.