DC Has Not Changed

It’s been many moons since I lived in the shadow of the DC beltway. Obviously while the years have passed by quicker than I ever thought, the DC games have not changed. The guys involved below are more commonly known as beltway bandits. For good reason obviously! This time, it just so happens the bandits in question are related to the Obama CIO nominee, Vivek Kundra.

He is not implicated in this bribery. Even though he has nothing to do with this, it does bring up some serious questions.

As Vivek Kundra, President Obama’s choice for U.S. chief information officer, was speaking about government transparency at the Washington, D.C., convention center on Thursday morning, his former offices a few blocks away were being raided by the FBI.

You can also look at the facts that state Kundra was directly in charge of one of the people arrested.

Acar worked for Kundra as an information systems security officer with responsibility for government contracts. A number of requests for bids posted on the District’s Web site list Acar as “responsible for general administration of the contract” and “responsible for the day-to-day monitoring and supervision of the contract, of ensuring that the work conforms to the requirements of this contract.”

Even though it doesn’t state it, we can gather from this statement that Bansal was familiar with both Kundra and Acar.

Bansal previously worked as a project manager for the D.C. government

With Bansal going out and forming his government contracting company, you can pretty much bet he knew both Acar and Kundra professionally. You have to remember, in that DC contractor club, everyone knows or knows of everyone else. Kind of like the Silicon Valley actually.

The angle I see is that it’s the same old school DC beltway government contractor policy that has been in place longer than most of you reading this post. It goes way back. Even before I was involved in that game.

With the FBI involved in a sting operation, who’s to say this isn’t just another Republican conspiracy attempt to sabotage another nominee of the new administration? Or maybe as pointed out already, maybe it’s time to investigate everyone in Washington with a fine tooth comb?

Even though this brings the ugliness of DC politics and technology to the surface, it’s only been a little more than a week since Kundra was nominated.

I’m starting to think that what we were told after 9-1-1 about transparency between government branches, the executive branch and the FBI in this case, is all some sort of imaginary transparency that only exists on mainstream news networks that claim fair and balanced reporting.

We try to stay towards the technology angles, but this one mixed the best of both worlds – DC politics and good ol’ boy beltway bandits riding wild and the supposed new open technology blackberry slinging President. Now can someone tell me how this technology connected President wasn’t informed, or rather his staff wasn’t told, “Yo, Vivek Kundra might not be the right person to pick, you see, a couple of guys he knows is under a sting by the FBI!”

Are we that naive to believe that no one knew about a week ago, this might not be a good choice? Are we really that out there in la-la land that the news outlets can sell us this story without someone calling people out?

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