Slashdot Mirror
Arrest In $740M NYC Time and Attendance System Case
theodp writes "Mayor Bloomberg's perception of money, opines Gothamist's Christopher Robbins, is somewhat different than most non-billionaires. Just hours before the leader in the city's $740 million CityTime web-based time and attendance boondoggle was arrested for allegedly taking $5M in kickbacks, Bloomberg said on his weekly radio program that 'we actually did a pretty good job here, in retrospect.' Overshooting the projected $68M it would cost, adds Robbins, 'pretty much sounds like the exact opposite of a 'pretty good job'.' A US Attorney said SAIC Project Manager Gerald Denault was charged with accepting more than $5M in kickbacks laundered through international shell companies while steering more than $450M of city funds to the tech company behind the kickbacks. In December, CityTime consultants were charged with stealing $80 million."
The law should be that if a company pays kickbacks to get a contract, they forfeit all proceeds from the contract. So if they bribe someone for a $450M contract, they then should be liable for the full amount. I'll talk to my state representative about that.
What size?
The number of people it serves is unrelated to IT effort. The only impact it has is on the number of servers and databases the data has to be hosted on. The actual software is the same...1000 or 50,000.
THREE QUARTERS of a BILLION DOLLARS. That's a staff of 100 people at $100,000 each for 75 years.
I did a T&A system all by myself in 6 months for a company of 10,000 in 16 divisions making only $40k a year (this was 15 years ago).
The whole thing is absolute B.S.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
This is SAIC we are talking about. Corruption, regulatory capture, and general parasitism-on-dodgy-private-contract-projects are basically their business model.
Obviously the system has global multi-site datacenters, rfid implants, radioactive decay biometric rsa tokens and the system gives world class hand jobs.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Did you have to supply the tits and ass yourself?
I wonder how toothy the Bloomberg L.P. media coverage of this won't be?
The constitution carefully incorporates a relatively narrow definition of what constitutes treason and broadening it would be both difficult and dangerous.
However, I think that moving toward a sentencing model for high-numbers white collar criminals that recognizes that they are that much more pernicious than the deeply-unsympathetic-but-really-rather-penny-ante blue collar set would be a wholesome development.
You can rack up fairly stiff sentences for frauds and property crimes with expected gains of $10,000 or less. If we started basing the sentences for the million+ set on multiples of those, we might see their numbers dwindle... In cases where conspiracies, shell companies, and the like, are involved, we could make a good start by simply adopting the same mindset that we have for street gangs to more upmarket criminal organizations.
I got to pick them out...the pimp supplied them.
Hopefully the details of said T&A were stored in some kind of database - or were there so many you had to use a data whorehouse?
Yes, but not a relational data whorehouse...now that would just be creepy.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Some dude named Upgrayedd???
As an ex long-term employee of SAIC I can say that SAIC has done a lot of good work in many disciplines over the years. In my opinion, the company is not now the same as it originally was, however. It went from being a solely employee-owned company (and proud of it) to a public corporation with almost entirely new management team. The transition started happening around 2003 or 2004 or so, I think (SAIC began trading its stock publicly in the fall of 2006).
Having said that, I'm aghast at the allegations over CityTime and the sheer size of what appears to be a giant debacle.
This is SAIC we are talking about. Corruption, regulatory capture, and general parasitism-on-dodgy-private-contract-projects are basically their business model.
Wait. What? That's the business model for the US Senate.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I'm beginning to wonder if there are more than a dozen people on the Internet that know what treason is... Or possibly are sane.
What you've written is not only out to lunch, it indicates some sort of brain damage. Did you recently jab your finger to far up your nose?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Holy cow, you UK guys get paid for everything! I can't imagine ever getting paid overtime just because I finished my days work early. Heck, you can get in trouble for that kind of thing in the US.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Will that lead to a reduction in crime?
Or is it perhaps not a reduction in crime you're after, but base revenge?
The problem isn't the severity of the punishment (except that it's too hard for other crimes - there's a strong correlation between severity of punishment and recidivism), but the feeling these people have that they can get away with it, and not face a court at all. Because most of the time, they can, and don't.
Let's put it this way: Would you pick up a suitcase full of money if there was a 1% risk of getting caught? Would it change your decision if the penalty was increased from 2 years in jail to 10 years? Nah, didn't think so. But what if the risk of getting caught was much higher, say 25%? Would that change it?
Strip away all protections companies have that were meant for individuals only. And have any investment that balloons to more than, say, 125% of the inflation adjusted original be automatically subject to federal investigation. Yes, it will require more people. Some of the unemployed would welcome that. And it would save money.
Qui custodet custodien?
Who else can oversee government than another branch of government?
You sure can't, because if you found anything wrong, you would have no power to change anything.
Businesses can't, because they don't have any power either, and worse, they have a legal obligation to their shareholders to maximize profits, even if that money comes from the tax payers.
Yes, people in government can be greedy bastards. No doubt about that. But business leaders are greedy bastards -- it's their job.
Break the ties between the two, and you lessen the risk.
Even if it means empowering another branch of government.
The problem is people that have qualities that make them charismatic leaders that, get them in positions of power. With that, comes all to often, no morals and ethics that reflect those they are representing or working for. Having grown up reading the Punisher comics. Wish he were real.
You must be kidding. The amount of money that was stolen outright exceeded the entire original budget! Then the actual project cost over 10 times that budget AND in spite of being a well understood task, the system is so complex that nobody but the overbloated consultancy that produced it can even run it.
The whole thing should have cost about 18 million. 6 for the software and 12 more to process the usual government paperwork to make sure nobody not in the club absconds with the 6.
If we just agreed to define, for judicial purposes, all white collar criminals as 300lb, tattooed, black men named "Tyrone"(with gang connections, if a corporation is involved), I suspect that the problem would take care of itself.
If you can get white collar crime to face the same penalties (and the same prison conditions) as blue collar crime, you can expect shorter sentences and better conditions for all.
That is especially true if wealthy criminals are no more likely to go to the country club minimum security than poor criminals are.
Of course, just getting caught is only half of it. We have to make sure the "white collar" crime is actually prosecuted as well. A bunck of investment bankers screwed the entire world's economies for their personal gain and not one of them has gone to jail or even on trial.
for a govt job
I mean seriously, any decent programmer who can code well, cannot do this and would take him hours of hard labour.
Add a clean shirt, and pants, and the fact that you have to get up early 6am to get to work by 8am.
Thats just torture, I mean no real sane genius programmer can ever ever do that. NEVER.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.