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UN Belatedly Suspends Indian Enron Satyam, Puts
Contracts Under Assessment, No
Accountability on Oracle
Yet
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
January 14 -- The UN has belatedly
suspended as a vendor Satyam, and has put under review the ongoing
contracts of
this so-called Indian Enron, including a $6 million deal reached long
after the
World Bank first suspended the company. On January 13, Inner City Press
asked
UN spokesperson Michele Montas to explain how Satyam got this contract,
why the
UN's Inter-Agency Procurement Task Force process, meant to share
contractor
information throughout the UN system, had failed. Ms. Montas said she
was
unaware of the
controversy. Video here.
Hours later, Inner City Press asked
Assistant Secretary General Warren Sach about the scandal. He said that
UN
affiliated agencies are supposed to inform others of their suspension,
by
correspondence and through databases, which the World Bank appears to
have
failed to do.
On January
14, the Spokesperson's Office answered Inner City Press' question-
Subj: Your question yesterday on
Satyam
From: unspokesperson-donotreply
[at] un.org
To: Matthew Lee [at] innercitypress.com
Sent: 1/14/2009 10:04:28 A.M.
Eastern Standard Time
Satyam has been suspended from
the UN Secretariat vendor database. The information has been
communicated to
the UN procurement system and the UN Global Marketplace. Ongoing
contracts with
Satyam are currently under assessment.
An ongoing five
year contract between the UN
Secretariat and Satyam for over $6 million began on July 18, 2008, for
"talent
management software." It is time for the UN to provide further
information
on how this happened, what will be done and who will be held
accountable.
UN's Ban and computers, Satyam not shown, even in suspension database
In late
December
2008, Inner City Press exposed that
the UN purchased 30,000 licenses from Oracle to a computer program
called
Seibel, a so-called Customer Relations Management (CRM) system, and has
left
them unused.
That contract is for $7.5 million, of which
over $3 million have already been paid to Oracle. But the licenses have
never
been used, according to UN computer system personnel. These
whistleblowers,
outraged at the waste and of accountability they say is pervasive, have
directed Inner City Press to the documentary evidence of the phantom
contract. In the UN's online
Procurement database, the
information about the Seibel purchase from Oracle is substantially less
detailed than from other purchases. For other purchases, the
specifications of
the procurement are online, often dozens of pages. For this purchase
from
Oracle, there are no online specifications.
Internal whistleblowers tell Inner City
Press that worse than the mis-management that led to the purchase of
30,000
licenses well before they would or even could be used is the cover-up
that has
occurred afterwards. They also identify as problematic the UN's
contracting
with EMC Corporation to purchase licenses for a program called
Documentum,
ostensibly to replace the UN's Official Document System for the UN's
"Enterprise Content Management" system, ECM.
The flawed
contracting began under the tenure of Eduardo Blinder, who has since
migrated
to the even less overseen International Computing Center, to which the
UN
Secretariat outsources much of its work and procurement.
More recently, the person responsible for the
waste is the Officer in Charge who replaced Blinder, Chandramouli
Ramanathan.
In the UN's basement, Ban Ki-moon's
Secretariat's CRM and ECM are being considered for the UN's Fifth
(Budgetary)
Committee. But the Committee members have never been informed of the
waste that
has occurred. Nor has the Office of
Internal Oversight Services, embroiled in its own scandal, done
anything.
In a draft of the pending resolution provided
to Inner City Press by a budget committee source, the Secretary-General
is
criticized for proceeding with CRM and ECM before making any proposal
to the
General Assembly.
Inner City Press has asked Ban's spokesperson
Michele Montas about this critique from the General Assembly. Video
here. Ms.
Montas said she would have no comment at all until after the Assembly
vote on
the resolution which she said might not take place until Christmas Eve.
But there has still been no
comment. Watch
this site.
Click here for Inner City Press'
review-of-2008 UN Top Ten debate
Click here for Inner
City Press' December 24 debate on UN budget, Niger
Click here from Inner City Press'
December 12 debate on UN double standards
Click here for Inner
City Press' November 25 debate on Somalia, politics
Click here for Inner City
Press Nov. 7 debate on the war in Congo
Watch this site, and this Oct. 2 debate, on
UN, bailout, MDGs
and this October 17 debate, on
Security Council and Obama and the UN.
* * *
These
reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here
for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali
National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
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