The State Auditor’s report of Central Management Services is apparently due anytime, though the Sun-Times didn’t happen to mention when it was to be released…
It doesn’t look to be pretty given past audits of other agencies—all of which identify CMS operations as problems.
The Register Star picked up on these problems more than any other sources
And the original audits are available here
Earlier problems with CMS include problems getting contracts signed
But from the most recent story, this stands out to me as the most telling part of the problem
Paul Campbell, whom Blagojevich asked to take charge of the agency when director Michael Rumman leaves in May, said the agency has made monumental strides to consolidate purchasing, cut costs and document what it’s doing.
”There’s more documentation now than ever existed before about why people buy what they buy,” Campbell said Friday.
The point of making government more efficient is to make less documentation and simply hold agencies accountable. One of the more difficult efforts undertaken by Al Gore’s very successful effort to reinvent the federal bureaucracy, was to allow many purchases to be made by individual units. So if you need a computer, you didn’t have to go through a long process, you got approval and could go to a local store and buy it–now you can go on-line and do so.
More documentation to buy is the goal only when you have such massive fraud you can’t control it any other way. Documentation should be minimal with the agency setting out rules for when acquisition is appropriate and a standard to seek out the lowest cost easily achievable. Why an agency buys something should be because it helps carry out there mission.
If this is the way this effort is going to be defended, it’s not going to be pretty.