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LATEST LETTERS

Computer systems & fraud

Wednesday, May 9 at 1:46 PM

Guy Santo of Evergreen, a former unemployment insurance investigation unit supervisor with the Colorado Department of Labor & Employment, writes:

I laughed reading the headline about the state employee ripping-off the state for millions, “Data glitch set off alarm bells” (Rocky Mountain News, 5/2/07); and the quote the next day by the current department of revenue director saying, “What happened here couldn’t have happened in the new system.” Give me a break! Large thefts like this occur because some employees are crooked and their employers are lax in employment practices like background checks or other hiring procedures, protecting sensitive data, and/or not locking-up the cash box. Crediting a computer glitch, or touting a new system that could detect fraud, misses the point completely.
Indeed, bigger crimes against Colorado taxpayers are the recently purchased computer systems that don’t work and the previous administration’s dismantling of the civil service sytem these past eight years. The real crooks are politically appointed department heads swearing they must buy new computer systems or their agencies will be unable to function. Meanwhile, state employees, who really make the system work, are no longer hired and promoted based on “merit,” but on how well they cheer for new computer systems. Likewise, it is meritless to say a computer system helped expose a fraud because it didn’t work (co-workers detected the fraud in this case, but has the best selling point for a new system boiled down to: it doesn’t work?). I think voters elected the new governor partly because they were tired of the same old business as usual. I hope the legislature will realize computer sales pitches are the problem and use their oversight authority and power of the purse to fix the problem and end this wasteful spending spree.

This letter has not been edited.

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