DC Fires Tech Contractors, Puts Employees On Leave

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.'"

Comments

DC government is pointless

[BadAnalogyGuy]

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:DC government is pointless

[retech]

The burden to adjust is not on the system but upon the individual. If they chose not integrate that is their problem. The law should make no excuses for anyone. These were, presumably, very intelligent people, where they were from cannot be an excuse.

Neither can being a politician in a corrupt system. We must make people accountable for their actions once again.

Re:DC government is pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:DC government is pointless

[billcopc]

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:DC government is pointless

[Antique Geekmeister]

The long-winded procedures in fact discourage honesty. They encourage systemic fraud.

DC plans to fire 23 Technology Office contractors

[commodore64_love]

Anybody want to hire a C programmer? I'll be available effective next Friday.

Contractors hiring other contractors...

[tyroneking]

"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.

Kundra sounds like a great manager

[lseltzer]

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:Kundra sounds like a great manager

[Black-Man]

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:Obama CIO a confessed petty thief

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Parent isn't flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[Shivetya]

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