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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.
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.
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...
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
Ya but we feel confident that they can do a good job with health care!!
As a scientist working for a US-government research lab, these stories make me die a bit inside.
Where I work, we are very budget conscious. We could never justify spending $3000 on laptops. In fact we have to make a very solid case before we can get our desktops upgraded to even modern commodity levels (despite the fact that, as you might guess, we do plenty of work that pushes a desktop machine to its limits). Moreover, we have a very strict inventory system. All equipment (including computers) is accounted for, and has to be barcode-scanned annually to make sure it's still accounted for. Even computers that are so old no one would want them are still meticulously tracked.
I always assumed that this was standard for government agencies... but I guess some agencies are able to bend and break these rules more wantonly than others. It makes me sad to think of the wastage in one branch when we are diligently following the rules, and barely scraping by, in another...
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
Haven't dealt with Microsoft lately, have we?