AHS staffer had conflict of interest, report finds
Contract given to firm executive had worked for
A senior civil servant gave a $75,000 contract to a consulting company he once worked for and still held shares in, Alberta’s public interest commissioner revealed in his first investigative report Tuesday.
The consulting company was hired to help fix a computer purchasing debacle, after Alberta Health Services spent $10 million on new computers without first checking to make sure the new hardware would work with existing software.
As a result, many of the computers sat unused for nearly a year.
Public interest commissioner Peter Hourihan said his investigation found a conflict of interest and mismanagement, but it did not reach the threshold of“gross mismanagement” of public money or assets that constitutes wrong doing under Alberta’s new Public Interest Disclosure Act.
“Although the threshold of wrongdoing was not met, our investigation found some decisions and actions by AHS … were still not done correctly,” Hourihan said. “This is a significant issue: A senior executive should have understood the importance of declaring a conflict (of interest) when one arises.”
The allegations surfaced in January in two anonymous letters sent to the health minister and the premier.
The opposition Wildrose party called on Alberta’s auditor general to investigate, but the auditor general referred the matter to Hourihan’s office.
Hourihan’s 16-page report shows the recommendation to purchase the computers was made in December 2011 and approved the following month. AHS received the computers in March 2012 and awarded a $4.4-million “deployment contract” in August. By October, the contractor was writing a “project delay analysis” and in November the consultants were hired.
The contract with Accenture, released by AHS Tuesday, says the computer rollout was in “jeopardy” and the consultant was expected to “help Alberta Health Services re-establish control” over the project.
Hourihan said staff who reported directly to the senior civil servant requested the consultant, even though they had no authority to do so.
The senior civil servant then co-signed the contract, even though he had no authority to do so, either. The civil servant revealed the conflict of interest after the contract was complete. He was not fired and did not resign, but no longer works at AHS. His name was not released.
AHS CEO Vickie Kaminski said the organization requires staff to disclose potential conflicts of interest each year and also reviews work histories for conflicts. “There isn’t much else we can do,” Kaminski said. “It really is dependent on some integrity in the individual.”
In addition, she said AHS has introduced new solesource contracting rules and such contracts will be “much rarer” than in the past.
“This was a very rushed purchase,” Kaminski said, explaining there was money available, a great need for new computers and an opportunity to save $1 million by buying in bulk.
“The deployment of it was the piece of the project that wasn’t well thought-out,” she said. “We didn’t have sufficient internal resources to deploy them quickly.”
Kaminski said the resources must now be in place before such deals are formalized.
Wildrose critic Kerry Towle said “wrongdoing is too narrowly defined in the current legislation and allows for little accountability.
“Despite finding a serious conflict of interest, nobody is being held responsible,” she said in a statement. “It is proof of what we’ve said all along, this legislation is designed to protect the government, and not the taxpayers.”