WASHINGTON — A senior Department of Commerce official has been accused of a string of abuses including questionable attendance records, inappropriate reimbursement requests and letting her sons download pornography and racially offensive material onto government computers.
A report by the Office of Inspector General says that since 2013 the senior official in question, who isn’t identified, also tried to get a whistle-blower suspended.
The report says the senior official managed other personnel and had assignments including human resources, information technology and financial management.
The alleged abuses includes ethical lapses, waste of government resources, questionable time card entries, inappropriate requests for expense reimbursements and efforts to get a whistle-blower suspended.
The report says the official had three desktop computers, three laptops and three iPads, all issued by the government, in her home for personal use, and that some were used by her sons to download pornography and racially offensive material.
The official says in the report that she asked for new computers and equipment when the old ones malfunctioned, but never returned the older equipment, in one case saying she simply “didn’t make the time to turn [the older computer] in timely.” A forensic examination detailed in the report says that someone in her household signed onto one of the computers as late as March 26, 2014, nearly seven months after she’d brought home a newer computer.
“Senior Official’s household treated her government-issued desktop computers as household property,” the report says, citing the official herself as saying that one member of her household used the computers for personal purposes about 20 hours a week.
Investigators say the senior official said she didn’t think using government devices for pornography was inappropriate because the activity didn’t occur during work hours or while connected to a government network — a mindset that the report calls “troubling,” particularly given her management position.
The report also says the senior official inappropriately booked a flight to a work conference overseas that included a layover in Paris, reportedly to facilitate a shopping trip, and including personal expenses the senior official inappropriately asked the government to reimburse.
Government employees are permitted to combine business and personal travel, the report says, but they can only be reimbursed for “the cost of travel by a direct route or on an uninterrupted basis.”
The report also indicates that time and attendance record entries by the senior official are not substantiated by security-card swipes indicating office entry and exits. On roughly 25 percent of the days investigators examined, the gap between the arrival and departure times and the respective card swipes was more than 15 minutes.
The official reportedly said that the discrepancies happened because she works in her car, taking phone calls and answering emails. But the report details a day where she put herself down for eight hours of work on a day when she had emailed her staff to say she would be taking leave for the day. Records show that her only recorded work was answering four emails in a 20-minute span, and in one directing that questions be sent to someone else in the office.
As to the alleged retaliation against a whistle-blower, the report says that the official told investigators from the Inspector General’s office who she thought might have known about the computer usage. Two and a half hours later, she emailed a senior counsel detailing the “need to take corrective action” against that employee, presenting as evidence an authorization to spend $75 that the worker had approved after the official said she had denied it.
Two weeks later, the worker got a notice of intent for a three-day suspension without pay. I was rescinded after the worker acknowledged the authorization was a mistake.
Among the OIG report recommendations are that “appropriate administrative action” be taken. They also say that the office that issued the computer equipment should “evaluate and make appropriate changes” to its policy on equipment for home use.
