Misconduct | The Contracting Education Academy

May 8, 2014 By AMK

DoD shows contractor personnel fired for misconduct as eligible for security clearance, IG says

When contractor employees accused of misconduct are fired or quit before DoD makes judgement, the system that records the adjudication still shows them as eligible for security clearance, a DoD inspector general report says.

In all the cases the auditors reviewed, as soon as employee misconduct was discovered, the contracting company either fired the employee or the employee resigned, the report (pdf) says. Once that occurred, the employee no longer had a need for access to classified information and no further personnel security action was taken to adjudicate the misconduct.

Since the case was not adjudicated for revocation of security clearance, it wasn’t reported to the Joint Personnel Adjudicative System – the database that holds information on contractors who’ve lost security clearance due to misconduct, the IG says.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.fiercegovernment.com/story/dod-system-still-showing-contractors-fired-misconduct-elegible-security-cle/2014-04-21

December 27, 2013 By AMK

Navy Secretary Mabus expects bribery scandal to widen

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said Friday that he bluntly told criminal investigators to pursue a widening bribery scandal “wherever it leads” and that he expects more people to get swept up in a case that has already tarred several senior officers and exposed an international, multimillion-dollar fraud scheme.

“I certainly don’t think we’ve seen the end of it,” Mabus told reporters at the Pentagon in his first public comments on the scandal since it came to light in September. “I would rather get bad headlines than let bad people get away.”

Mabus, the Navy’s top civilian official since 2009, spoke a day after he held an unusual video conference with the Navy’s fleet commanders and other admirals around the world to emphasize the need to uphold ethical standards and prevent contracting fraud. With the scandal showing no sign of abating, he also has ordered several reviews and an audit into how the Navy pays for port services.

The Navy has been tarnished by a succession of embarrassing revelations over the past three months about its relationship with a major foreign defense contractor, Singapore-based Glenn Defense Marine Asia, that has provided port services to U.S. ships and submarines in the Pacific for a quarter-century.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/navy-secretary-mabus-expects-bribery-scandal-to-widen/2013/12/20/c85f8ece-6990-11e3-8b5b-a77187b716a3_story.html

July 3, 2013 By AMK

Agencies need governmentwide guidance on suspension and debarment process, GAO official says

Though the suspension and debarment system has been around for many years, there is little guidance for it, Government Accountability Office Acting Director of Acquisition and Sourcing Management John Neumann said at a June 12 House Government and Oversight Committee hearing.

“You won’t find anywhere in the U.S. code other than a note in the financial chapter,” Neumann said. “That’s part of the problem. We created a system, but did not supply guidance on how it should operate.”

The Interagency Suspension and Debarment Committee, established in 1986, monitors and coordinates the governmentwide system of suspension and debarment, but agencies aren’t required to work with the ISDC, Neumann noted.

ISDC relies on voluntary agency participation in its informal coordination process, which works well when used, he said. However, Neumann found that not all agencies coordinated through ISDC, and agencies without active suspension and debarment programs generally were not represented at monthly coordination meetings.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.fiercegovernment.com/story/agencies-need-governmentwide-guidance-suspense-and-debarment-process-gao-of/2013-06-13?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal

February 25, 2013 By AMK

Former prosecutor and auditor, now re-elected Senator, puts wasteful contractors and agencies ‘on notice’

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., written off by many political strategists last year as a poor prospect for reelection, has landed the chairmanship of a new and permanent Financial and Contracting Oversight subcommittee of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs panel.

“I’m putting every federal agency on notice– any employee or contractor who wastes taxpayer money, or acts inappropriately on the taxpayer dime, will have this committee to answer to,” McCaskill said in a statement on Wednesday announcing the change.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/oversight/2013/02/senator-puts-wasteful-contractors-and-agencies-notice/61290/?oref=skybox

October 4, 2011 By AMK

Move over, FAPIIS – POGO freshens up its contractor misconduct database

The federal government’s largest contractors have paid $25.3 billion in fines and penalties for everything from A to Z: from improper accounting practices to selling the government defective Zylon body armor. These and more than 1,400 other misconduct instances can be found in the Federal Contractor Misconduct Database (FCMD), which has now been updated with fiscal year 2010’s top 100 ranking. [Note: The FCMD is published by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), a nonprofit watchdog group.]

The top 100 features 7 new contractors, including international accounting firm Deloitte LLP, package delivery company United Parcel Service (UPS), and linguistic services provider Mission Essential Personnel. The FCMD now includes misconduct information on 160 of the federal government’s largest suppliers of goods and services.

The top 100 contractors received $276 billion in contracts last fiscal year, accounting for slightly more than half of the $536 billion in contracts awarded that year. As of today, these 100 contractors have accumulated 821 misconduct instances. Thirty-eight of the top 100 have zero or one instance, a reminder that misconduct need not be accepted as a cost of doing business with the federal government.

As has occurred in the past, the USAspending.gov data on which the top 100 ranking is based contains errors. Therefore, you will see double listings for Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman.

Among the instances you will find in the FCMD:

A Department of Defense Inspector General finding that Boeing overcharged the Army by about $13 million (131.5 percent) for spare helicopter parts.
A DoD Inspector General audit report issued 4 months later that found United Technologies’ Sikorsky Aircraft unit overcharged the U.S. Army by as much as $12 million for Blackhawk helicopter spare parts.
BP’s agreement to provide $1 billion to begin restoration efforts following last year’s massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The assault plea of a former DynCorp employee who stabbed a man in Afghanistan in November 2010.
FedEx’s agreement to pay the United States $8 million to resolve allegations of overcharging federal agencies for package deliveries.
The $4 million settlement of claims that Fluor employees defrauded the federal purchase card (“P-card”) program at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Nuclear Site.
Honeywell International’s payment of millions in fines to federal and state authorities for environmental and safety violations at its uranium hexafluoride (UF6) conversion facility in Illinois.
Humana’s $3.4 million fine for violating Florida’s Medicaid fraud reporting law.
IBM’s $10 million settlement of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act charges that its Korean and Chinese subsidiaries gave bribes to government officials.
Corruption charges brought against former SAIC employees alleged to have received kickbacks and overcharged New York City on the CityTime information technology project.

POGO’s FCMD complements the federal government’s contractor responsibility database, the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System, or FAPIIS. POGO was pleased to discover the recent addition of several new useful features to FAPIIS, which is on its way to becoming an indispensable resource that strengthens accountability over the more than $1 trillion in taxpayer money spent each year on federal contracts and grants.

— Neil Gordon is a POGO Investigator. Published Sept. 29, 2011 at http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2011/09/move-over-fapiis-pogo-freshens-up-its-contractor-misconduct-database.html.

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