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Soruce: Kathleen Hickey, Federal Computer Week (LA), Sep 01, 2010

Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's technology outsourcing cost the city an unnecessary $1 million more than if the work had been done in-house, according to a new report from Ed Quatrevaux, the city's inspector general.

The report, issued Aug. 30th, found the city's contract with Telecommunications Development Corp. wasted more than $750,000 in an eight-month period from salaries alone.

Source: By Rosalind S. Helderman and Anita Kumar, Washington Post (VA), Thursday, September 2, 2010; B01

RICHMOND -- The data storage unit that failed in a warehouse outside of Richmond last week, wreaking havoc in the computer networks of a number of Virginia agencies for more than a week, is a ubiquitous bit of technology used by virtually every major company and government in the country.

The crash -- still baffling to state officials -- exposes the vulnerability of modern, massively complex interconnected computer networks, and is being closely watched by information technology professionals across the country.

Source:  By TAMAR LEWIN, New York Times, August 6, 2010

The Washington Post Company's Kaplan Inc. unit suspended enrollment on Friday at its campuses in Pembroke Pines, Fla., and Riverside, Calif., where undercover investigators for the Government Accountability Office found deceptive practices by admissions officials.
At a Senate hearing on Wednesday on recruitment at for-profit colleges, a G.A.O. report, accompanied by videos, described deceptive or fraudulent practices at each of 15 campuses visited, two of which were Kaplan campuses. At Kaplan College in Pembroke Pines, for example, an admissions officer told investigators posing as applicants that the college had the same accreditation as Harvard.

Source: By DAN MIHALOPOULOS and MICK DUMKE, Chicago News Scoop (IL)
July 29, 2010

..... The deal with the city allows the company to raise meter rates by an average of 20 percent next year, 17 percent in 2012 and 14 percent in 2013, with increases beyond that year to be based on inflation. Those increases are expected to lift revenues to almost $162 million a year in 2020, the Standard & Poor's analysts estimated.

Source:
Rick Orlov, Contra Costa Times (CA) 08/10/2010

The Los Angeles Department of Transportation wasted $855,000 and went over budget by nearly $2.5 million on a contract to equip parking enforcement vehicles with GPS systems, City Controller Wendy Greuel said Tuesday.

A new audit found that Transportation Department officials failed to properly oversee the $1.5 million contract with Integrated System Resources. As a result, the company eventually received $4 million.

Source: The Arizona Republic, Aug. 10, 2010 12:00 AM

..... The Golden Valley prison, run by Utah-based Management and Training Corp., is classified as medium security and has 117 inmates serving life sentences, nearly half for first-degree murder.

..... Running a prison is a complex mix of order and foresight. Many of the inmates have a potent combination of criminal skills, time on their hands and motivation to get around prison rules, with escape as the ultimate goal.  The escapes add to the debate over the role and oversight of private prisons in Arizona.

.... After two convicted killers escaped from a private prison in Florence in 2007, then-Sen. Robert Blendu, a Litchfield Park Republican, introduced a bill that would have required private prisons to share information with state officials and barred them from bringing dangerous felons to Arizona.  The positions on the bill, which didn't pass, show the complexity of the overall issue

Source: Yonah Freemark, Transport Politic,  August 3rd, 2010

For investors interested in infrastructure projects these days, there is apparently a lot of low-hanging fruit to pick. This, at least, is the argument made by Montréal-based contractor and engineering firm SNC-Lavalin, which has pulled out of a years-long commitment to operating Toronto's planned airport connection train because the regional transportation authority refused to subsidize the service.

Source: New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo news release, July 21, 2010

Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo announced today a $20 million settlement with food services provider Sodexo for overcharging 21 New York school districts as well as the SUNY system.

An Attorney General investigation found that the company promised to provide goods at cost but failed to acknowledge rebates from suppliers, resulting in illegal overcharges to the schools. The investigation was sparked by former employees of Sodexo under the New York False Claims Act, which allows whistleblowers to come forward to disclose wrongdoing without fear of retribution. The settlement was unsealed in Federal Court in Massachusetts and is the largest monetary settlement under the Act that does not involve Medicaid funds.

Source: By KEN KUSMER, Associated Press (IN), July 21, 2010

 Indiana's human services agency says it found problems with IBM Corp.'s takeover of welfare intake services early in the project and suggested delays, but yielded to the company's wishes to expand the project.

IBM, meanwhile, claims the Family and Social Services Administration seized more than $9 million worth of its computers, servers and office furniture without paying for them after Gov. Mitch Daniels fired the technology giant last year.

Source: DC 37 (NY), 2010