"Cognos tied to offer to official; Firm was seeking state contract; Move raises ethical questions" by Andrea Estes, Globe Staff and Stephen Kurkjian, Globe Correspondent | July 7, 2008
A former state Department of Education administrator has told investigators that she was offered a private sector job by a sales representative for
Joseph Lally, a Cognos representative trying to broker a multimillion-dollar contract between Cognos and the state, went over the head of Maureen Chew, who was the education department's chief information officer head to her superiors in a successful effort to land a multimillion-dollar software contract, according to the officials. He had unusual access to the Department of Education's headquarters in Malden.
The report of the job offer marks yet another instance of Cognos appearing in the thick of questionable activity in pursuit of state business.
The Globe reported in April that House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi had personally met with a key state official to express interest in the kind of software that Cognos was trying to sell in the 2007 deal. The Globe also reported that Lally, again serving as a middleman, portrayed himself to state officials as DiMasi's friend, and that Cognos paid longtime DiMasi friend Richard McDonough $100,000 to work as a lobbyist for the company.
Cognos had also been a repeated sponsor of a charity golf tournament hosted by DiMasi at his private club in Ipswich.
Also see: Putting Par on the State's Dime
The $13 million contract with the state was revoked by the Patrick administration in March, and the money has been refunded to the treasury. The deal - and the maneuverings around it - remain the focus of a state Ethics Commission investigation.
The $4.5 million education contract signed in 2006 contained the same players - Lally and McDonough - attempting to exert a similar kind of influence as the controversial $13 million deal in 2007.
In both cases, Lally aggressively marketed software to state officials, bragging about his ties to DiMasi and asserting that he could arrange funding for the purchases, according to the former Department of Education official and two former Cognos employees.
While pushing to land the smaller education department contract, Lally specifically emphasized that he could have money added to the state budget to fund the deal because of his friendship with DiMasi, according to Chew and a former Cognos employee. The contract provided for a data warehouse system, which would allow the department to collect, track, and share data about students, teachers, and finances across the state.
In April 2006, Lally's prediction proved true. House lawmakers added a new $5.2 million line item for the contract through a House budget amendment. DiMasi told fellow legislators at the time that the amendment was a priority, according to an official with direct knowledge of the budget negotiations.
DiMasi declined requests for interviews, but in an e-mail response, his spokesman, David Guarino, said the speaker did not ask the amendment's sponsor, former representative Robert Coughlin, to file the measure.
"He did not press for the amendment and, in fact, had absolutely no conversations with Representative Coughlin about the amendment," Guarino wrote.
"If Speaker DiMasi has a funding priority for the state budget, it is not usually proposed as an amendment by another member but is typically filed directly in the version drafted by the House Ways and Means Committee. Speaker DiMasi had absolutely nothing to do with the awarding of this or any other contract by the administration."
Maybe it is time for these lying politicians that are living it up on our dime to swing a little; after a couple of them, I'll bet this shit stops.
McDonough also pushed for the education contract, according to a state official and a former Cognos employee. Though McDonough had registered as a lobbyist for Cognos in years past, he did not report his activities on Cognos' behalf in 2005 or 2006, according to records of the secretary of state's office.
When contacted by phone last week, McDonough refused to discuss the contract. "I don't have anything to say about anything," McDonough said. "I don't speak to reporters. Have a great day."
Can't say as I blame him there.
Cognos was selected over 10 other bidders for a yearlong pilot in August 2005, despite ranking fifth in a scoring system that considered cost and a variety of other factors.
In an interview with the Globe, then-Education Commissioner David Driscoll said it was always the agency's intention to put in place a statewide Cognos software program and that the pilot wasn't meant to test the product, just to introduce it gradually to education department and district users across the state.
"Cognos was the vendor and we started with the pilot districts, just to get going," said Driscoll, who is now a consultant. "You start with districts that are ready - that's how you roll it out. I think that was the way it was always intended - to be phased in."
That's the way Ron Paul says it works!!!
He said he never spoke to DiMasi about the purchase and did not know Lally. He acknowledged having a phone conversation about the program with McDonough.
"He was interested in having the appropriation go through," Driscoll said.
According to documents and interviews with Department of Education and former Cognos employees, the agency decided in 2005 to implement a data warehouse and reporting system in part because local districts were considering buying software on their own and state officials thought it better to centralize the purchases.
In addition, the federal No Child Left Behind Act requires states to generate reports about student, staff, and program performance.
Oh, ANOTHER FALLOUT from that shit law! Sig Heil!
Department of Education officials picked the top five bidders and then, after discussion and without any written analyses, chose two finalists - Cognos and Deloitte - according to Department of Education chief of staff Heidi Guarino.
The five semifinalists demonstrated their products for two weeks in June 2005, and in August 2005, after staffers were given a chance to experiment with the systems of the two finalists, the decision was made to buy from Cognos.
"The two finalists - we spent a long period of time putting them through their paces," said Robert Bickerton, the education department's senior associate commissioner
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They already knew where the OVERPRICED CONTRACT (that's TAXPAYER MONEY) was going!
Meanwhile, check out what our great guverner is up to in the above post (pfffft)!
