The U.S. Education Department has not properly carried out procedures to prevent conflicts of interest in awarding contracts, according to a memorandum from the department’s inspector general. The department concurred with the inspector’s conclusions, which found that procedures to identify conflicts of interest were effective in theory but were not used properly. But the report found no evidence that the department had failed to identify an actual conflict of interest.
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3 Responses to Education Department’s Conflict-of-Interest Process Was Used Incorrectly
11132507 - October 12, 2009 at 3:31 pm
The possibility of conflicts of interest by a branch of the Federal government? During the Bush Administration?!? Now who’s going to believe that?
wnickcline - October 13, 2009 at 11:09 am
look at GWU for probable misuse of funds.
heatherdunbar - October 14, 2009 at 9:43 am
What do we have here?It is not an unfortunate “glitch”, for instance that Income-Based Repayment/IBR’s implementation has been delayed until March on the FAFSA site. It is part of a multi-corporate business strategy.When ACS (which is *not* on the list of 4 approved ED loan servicers- Sallie Mae/ SLM Corp/UPromise, AES/ PHEAA, Great Lakes/ Deutschebank and Nelnet) is still under contract to answer the phones and serving as webmaster at FAFSA and Pearson/ Vangent (also *not* on the list of 4 approved ED loan servicers)is answering the phones in ED’s central billing offices, virtualy or actually in Greenville TX, answering the phones for the Secretary of Education and the ED Ombudsmans Office, then there will be performance problems administering the Income-based Repayment program.It is not that there is no unmet need. It is not that Congress did not think before they voted. It is a matter of who is actually in charge of administering federal programs. It is that student lenders and collection agents that are calling the shots- entirely in conflict of interest absolutely above the law- because what they can’t write, they sink any time it suits them.