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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."
They're using them and a bunch of XBoxes to create a supercomputer possible of calculating what wacky thing the president is going to do next.
Seems like that is the most effective thing right now.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I would give eBay a try to find them out!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Obviously the problem is in assuming that all of the laptops were "worth" the same. Actually, there were 999 laptops that the government paid about $1,000 each for, which had important documents containing SSNs, medical and employment records, etc of every single person in the united states who was not a member of the Department of Homeland Security, as well as various secret anti-terrorist initiatives, identities of government moles working within terrorist groups and so on, totaling a value of about $999,000.
The other $29,001,000 is due to the loss of one laptop containing the SSN and medical records of the director of the Department of Homeland Security.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Call in Jack Bauer, I'm sure he'll have them back within 24 hours.
Were they MacBook Airs? Perhaps they're stuck inside some manila envelopes.
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). =/
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
They were probably Dell D6X0 series laptops with encrypted hard drives. Getting a basic one right now (1GB RAM, 1.73GHz Dual-Core Processor, Encrypted Hard Drive) _would_ cost me about $1,100 if I could buy direct from Dell, but thanks to 8(a) contract purchasing obligation, it'd run me over $2,500 from the reseller (who adds zero benefit). Aren't you glad we're supporting small, disadvantaged, minority, woman-owned businesses at the cost of your (and my) tax dollars?
1) They've only done one pass of their inventory. Once this has become public, the supervisors will get pushed on from their bosses to make sure that more equipment is accounted for in the second and third passes.
2) The reason that many of these laptops are listed as worth ~$3,000 is probably that some of them are 10+ years old (when laptops were really really expensive). That also explains why some of them can't be found; they're shoved in the back of filing cabinets or in the bottom of desk-drawers because they haven't been used in years and years. Their practical value is probably nothing, but -- on paper -- they're worth thousands because that's what they were bought for all those years ago...
I haven't worked for the government ever asides from working as an intern for a local County government's IT department, so I really don't know the answer to this.
What in the world happens with these things as far as papertrails go? This question comes to mind every time they "lose" weapons or laptops. Isn't there anyone that has their name on these items as being responsible? Surely either the shipping departments, the departments that they were assigned to, or the people that they were assigned to could be held responsible right?
I imagine for example that in moving of large arms shipments around the Middle East for our troops that there's someone always in charge of the stuff, or that last touched it. Wouldn't a great place to start (and place the blame) be the last person that signed off on something like this? In anything bigger than a really tiny company, there should be very clear paper trails like this right?
Doesn't someone have to answer? Isn't it the auditors job to know who last touched them?
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Cost of laptop: $3000
Cost of personnel to procure it, insurance, shipping, paperwork, legislation, research, etc on a per-item basis: $8000
Total cost in taxes, per laptop, to you: $11000
Cost of laptop, out of back of 10-year-old SUV with motor running, on street, from some guy named Joey with methamphetamine acne: $400
technical writing / development
They're obviously not very good at maths
9/11 changed everything... even multiplication.
I'm not dead yet!
Aren't you glad we're supporting small, disadvantaged, minority, woman-owned businesses at the cost of your (and my) tax dollars?
Yep sounds like my old company of 20 people doing contracts for the government. The President and VP co owned the company... guess who was the president: the minority woman. Guess who did most of the contact establishment, contract negotiation, and assembled the technical know how, and basically ran the company... the white bread male VP. She was useless, and started to get bitter when she began to realize this. Not saying this is a reflection of her nationality or sex, just that she was nothing more than a figurehead for the company so we could get more contracts.
Large organisations like to restrict the numbers of their suppliers as far as possible, this means there is little or no competition for vendors, who are then able to charge as they like.
I don't know which MBA came up with that concept, but there you go.
Deleted
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.
Don't forget warranties and service contracts and markups from resellers... it's easy to tip $3k a laptop if you try.
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?
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
The $30M number is bogus, it includes a lot of other stuff.
This whole article is sourced from a blog called "Dead Men Working" which is focused on venting the frustrations diplomatic foreign service officers about their problems with getting security clearance from the Bureau of Diplomatic Security; coincidentally the group alleged to have lost the laptops. So take the article with a grain of salt.
Also, the blog reported yesterday that the laptops were all found and accounted for. So, really, nothing to see here.
The "Dead Men Working" blog is really interesting reading though. http://www.deadmenworking.blogspot.com/
Anti-terror laptops lose U.S.!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
To quote from their PR materials: Lockheed Martin is the largest provider of IT services, systems integration, and training to the U.S. Government. [...] with approximately $21.4 billion in 2007 sales.
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.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
The Navy pays Northrup Grumman (through subcontractor EDS) $3,000 per year to LEASE crappy Dell Laptops.
http://www.eds.com/sites/nmci/
You'd think that this would come with a certain amount of priced-in tech support, but that all costs extra, too. The whole system is a giant POS that doesn't do what the Navy really needs and still costs the taxpayers three times what it would be worth even if it did work right. Government contracts being what they are, I'd imagine that any other federal agency would pay similarly inflated prices.
will end up on Wikileaks! I will wait patiently.
At least according to this website: http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=hsnews-000002717866
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.
"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.