Federal Probe Casts Doubt on D.C. Contract Reform Effort

OST, which has contracts with the federal government, companies and D.C. agencies, won the D.C. technology office contract over six other firms last summer. Narula said his company has lived up to that contract. When asked whether OST had the authority and ability to root out the bribery scheme, which a technology office employee disclosed to federal agents, Narula said: "That's not part of our role."

Though allegedly Acar and Bansal violated city rules by regularly meeting and talking, Narula said his company, which has about eight employees assigned full time to the contract, was powerless to detect such behavior.

"There's no way for us to find that out," he said. "We can only address what's in our contract. D.C. has the bigger picture. They have the overall sense of what's happening. OST does not have access to the details."

Under the city's Information Technology Staff Augmentation system, city managers submit requests for consultants to OST, which then posts them on a Web site, solicits résumés from the subcontractors and passes them on to the managers. Once the managers have interviewed candidates and made a decision, OST awards the contract.

In addition, OST's contract with the city says it "shall be responsible for monitoring and evaluating against a set of performance standards approved by the District, on a quarterly basis, the performance of the Subcontracting Vendors."

Narula said OST is submitting audits of the 37 firms that have won contracts since his company took over in October. The District provided 10 of the audits to The Washington Post but declined to provide the audits of the three firms -- two owned by Bansal and one by Acar -- allegedly linked to the bribery scheme.

The audits show whether the companies had provided sufficient tax and insurance paperwork and candidates' résumés and whether the consultants had reported to work on time, filed time sheets promptly and performed their jobs capably. Federal officials allege that Acar falsely certified time sheets submitted by Bansal for "ghost employees" and invoices for goods the city never received.

Several technology office employees were asked who was responsible for monitoring the relationship between office managers and the consulting firms. Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, they said that most managers reported to two deputy chief technology officers but that Acar reported directly to Kundra because of the sensitivity of the security division. Acar and his staff of about 15 worked in a locked room, the employees said. Kundra's signature appears on many consultant work orders produced by Acar, according to copies of the orders obtained by The Post.

The U.S. attorney's office said Kundra is not suspected of any wrongdoing.

Tim Booker, whose MindFinders consulting company has worked with the technology office, said that ultimately the city has to take responsibility for oversight.

"OST can manage until it's blue in the face, but at the end of the day, it comes back to the government," Booker said. "It's the culture more than anything else."

Booker added that OST has a "system full of data" about how managers are choosing consultants. Some of it is publicly accessible online, but not all.

"If they put it all out there," he said, "people would start asking questions, such as, 'What in the world is going on?' "