DMV PROJECT PHOENIX WASTE, FRAUD AND ABUSE
South Carolina, Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV)
Used to be the Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) Under
SC, Department of Public Safety (DPS)
REF: Project Phoenix MAJOR SCAM TO TAXPAYERS:
1. Computer Systems purchased by DMV
2. Document Management System
3. Database Application
4. Printers
5. Salary Raises
6. Contractors: CACI and PWC
Administrative People:
Boykin Rose Director DPS (Not sure of the total
involvement maybe 50%)
David Burgis former Director of DMV (100% involved)
Marcia Adams - Executive Director of DMV former Assistant to David Burgis (100% involved)
Jimmy Earley Information Technology (IT) Administrator (100% involved)
Philip Cockrell Network Manager (100% involved since 2001)
Wonda Uswa Field Office Administrator (100% involved)
Beverly Hamilton Field Office Administrator (100% involved since 2002)
Budget and Control Board (100% involved)
Peggy Faulty (100% involved)
Sherion Lewis (100% involved, even seen tampering accounts to reflect no trouble)
Mira? (not sure of last name) (100% involved, would sign off on purchases with Jimmy Earley/David/Marcia)
Other High-Level DMV Administrative Staff (Do not know all names-100% involved)
(Todd Hill, Walt Overbay, Ray Boist, Other Present Employees with Big Raises contribute to the SCAM) (Any IT staff that talked about the abusive concerns was fired, relocated or demoted)
All of these people are involved and have approved the mismanagement of state funds for the Project Phoenix. Project Phoenix could be an efficient and beneficial project if the administrative people possessed the proficient working IT background, but in the IT staff's opinion, none of the above administrative people possess the skills of IT policies or project oriented experience.
Instead the administrative people go against the advise of the IT staff who do possess the expertise for this type of project. The IT staff believes these administrative people are abusing the state funds. Because of the suspected state funds abuse, many former state employees have been required to take early retirement. The IT staff also believes that the current state employees are not receiving deserved raises and have been given reduced salaries; whereas, the administrative staff are receiving substantial raises and I believe on numerous occasions have wasted state funds.
1. DMV Computer Systems: The administrative people bought computer systems that were known not to support the DMV daily workloads. During the year the administrative people purchased large numbers of HP E-Vectra computer systems, which in fact were warned by IT staff that the HP E-Vectras would not support the DMV workloads. The Administrative staff went against the IT staff's advice and purchased the HP E-Vectras. During the Project Phoenix's hardware rollout, year of which included the HP E-Vectras, the administrative people discovered that the HP E-Vectras were not operating or functioning to the DMV workloads.
Once the Field Office staff began complaining on a regular basis about how badly the operational performance was of the newly purchased computers, the administrative people tried to secretively replace the HP E-Vectras with better performance
computers for example, Dells and a higher-grade HP computer system. Even these newer computers, Dell and HP higher grade, still do not handle the DMV workloads. This was also advised by the IT staff.
2. Document Management System (DMS): The administrative people were warned that the contractor, CACI, was not providing to the state of South Carolina the Document
Management System (DMS) that was outlined in the contract.
Most of the function that the contractor, CACI, provided was Free Off The Shelf software that came preinstalled with MS Windows, MS Paint. The state of South Carolina paid the contractor, CACI, US$2.6 million dollars to provide a working DMS.
The administrative people signed off for the DMS and when the DMS went out to the Field Office the DMS failed completely. The administrative people had the entire Field Office DMS returned to the Project Phoenix Head Quarters at Outlet Point
where it sits to this day.
The administrative people are in the process of paying more money to replace DMS with another DMS. The administrative people do not want anyone to find out about this replacement because of the waste of state funds.
There is one approval of 50 Dell computer systems that have been taken out of the Budget and Control Board's funds to start this replacement process. The 50 Dell computers have been purchased and are being implemented.
3. Database Application (DBA): The administrative people approved the DBA software, even though they were thoroughly warned, by IT staff, of the potential problems that would happen if proper procedures were not taken seriously.
For example, the older DMV database was written on a software language that is sensitive to other software packages.in order to communicate to the older DMV database, the state would provide a bridge type software that would communicate between the new DMV database software and the older DMV database. If the state did not properly plan out this procedure, the DBA would end up costing the state more to fix the problem, than the initial total amount. The fact is, the administrative people rejected the advise of the IT staff and never evaluated and planned the process.
Instead, the administrative people went over US$5 million (and counting) to the contractor, CACI, to provide a sloppy DBA software package. The administrative people know the new DBA software is not working and has caused many statewide crashes.
The administrative people are trying to cover up this blatant mismanagement of state funds and destroy the physical evidence by paying out more money to fix the problem. The administrative people have paid the contractor, CACI, to provide this database, even though they had already had state employees do the work for the contractor, CACI, to try and fix the problem for the contractor.in other words, they paid twice for the same work.
4. Printers: The administrative people purchased printers to be put along side the DMV computer systems in every Field Office around the state. These new printers are not designed to do the required workloads of the DMV Field Offices.
The administrative people were advised not to purchase these types of printers by IT staff.instead, against the advise of the IT staff, the administrative people purchased these printers. When the printers failed, the administrative people are now in the process of replacing these printers with newer printers. This is costing the state extra amounts of funds that could have been saved and better utilized if only the administrative people would have listened to the IT staff.
5. Salary Raises: The administrative people continue to increase their salaries by as much as 10-30% every year. The sad fact is the administrative people have been warned of the misuse of funds in systems that would not work.
The administrative people continue to purchase new systems to replace those systems, which are only a year old, while at the same time giving themselves raises. The good state employees are getting laid off or getting salary cuts while the administrative people line their pockets. Where does it end?
6. Contractors CACI and Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC): One interesting thing is the contractor, CACI, point of contact, Mike Cukura, is a reporter for the, State Newspaper, located in Columbia South Carolina.
Why has this POC not written the story of what is happening behind the scenes? It has been heard that this reporter has a conflict of interest because he is getting funds to be the POC and not write anything within the Project Phoenix Scam.in other words keep his mouth shut. The other interesting thing is the state hired an accounting firm, Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), to glance over the books and make sure the project is being followed according to the contract.
There are many accounts where PWC fixed the books and even took work from state employees and charged the state for the same work that the state employees had already performed.
Whenever this frustrating abuse was being conducted by PWC, the administrative people would hammer the state employees down and harass the state employees into silence. They even sneaked and loaded porn material on one employee because he refused to be a part of this.
There was a Call Center program that an IT staff worked on, in which PWC took all the work away from this IT staff person and claimed the work for PWC and then charged the state US$100,000 for the work.
The administrative people knew the Call Center work had been conducted by the IT staff and when this concern was brought to the attention to the administrative people by the IT staff, the IT staff was harassed by the administrative people.
Large amounts of money have been pumped into the pockets of the contractors, CACI and PWC, for work that has already been done by state employees all at the approval of the administrative people.
Another concern is the fact that PWC won the initial contract back around 1998-1999 at a bid for a Fixed Firm Price (FFP) in a single-time contract. Without going out on a rebid to the other competitive companies, the administrative people and PWC reworked the contract to be flexible on pricing and jointly developed the Statement Of Work (SOW).
Under IT staff's knowledge of the legal guidelines, IT staff believe this is unethical and very illegal mainly because this cut out any fair bidding process to any other qualified company that could have bid at a lower cost than PWC. IT staff have enclosed examples of a few emails between the administrative people and PWC outlining what IT staff believe to be the probable cause of IT staff's suspicions, that this is a scam and a biased occurrence.
This unethical, and IT staff believe illegal practice, is not just limited to just PWC. For example, around August CACI and the administrative people, worked on a SOW for a network contract bid. After the Request For Purchase (RFP) was awarded to CACI, another qualified company complained that they had a lower price than CACI which was stated in a letter to the administrative people as to why the lower bidding company did not win the bid. The administrative people responded that CACI was more qualified. This was such a big fat lie! Again, this gives the appearance of wrongdoing of illegal activity between the contractors and the administrative
People.
0 comments