Gary Welsh has a good post commenting on Angela Mapes Turner’s Fort Wayne Journal Gazette investigation into Rep. Eric Turner’s (R-Marion) financial interest in the failed ACS/IBM welfare eligibility privatization debacle.
A state representative who fought hard for a controversial call center created in his district as a part of Indiana’s failed welfare privatization effort has a financial stake in the building that houses it.
Rep. P. Eric Turner, R-Cicero, says his investment in the building owned by his son is a non-issue. But critics say the link should have been disclosed during the many public debates about problems with the IBM-led welfare changes.
Just as an added bonus, Turner’s daughter is general counsel for the Family & Social Services Agency and is its legislative director.
As Gary says, “I’m not surprised by Turner’s obvious self-dealing, and I doubt many others who’ve watched him over at the State House over the years are either.” He also notes some other crony type aspects that tie the ACS deals to the Daniels administration. And that’s a huge problem with privatization schemes. So often they seem not to be any real working of the free market. Rather they tend to be a way of shifting money from lower level public employees to executives and shareholders of well-connected businesses while diminishing the potential for public oversight of the operation.
Being a low level public employee, I’m unable to comment on the foregoing post.
Affiliated Computer Services, a for $profit$ company has created many of the core issues. They lack ethical standards of responsibility and accountability which derives from the top corporate management and oozes down to middle and lower management. Their management staff are deficient and uncommitted in identifying the fundamental problems. Politics is dominant in upper and middle management, and middle managers make arbitrary decisions and usually do not suffer the consequences. Nor are they held responsible for the mess. In other words, the exploitation and castigation of the those working any position other some form of management will continue. The operative assumption should be that someone, somewhere, has a better idea; and the operative compulsion is to find out who has that better idea, learn it, and put it into action to find initiatives to improve client services, total claim results, operational efficiency, and staff retention. An effective organizational structure that would facilitate working relationships between the various entities and have a set order and control that would enable monitoring of all processes. Using a “Divisional Structure” indisputably isn’t working. A “Matrix” type program would be evidently a more considerable approach. Indubitably GROSS NEGLIGENCE.