A senior Commerce Department official was allowed to store several government-issued devices at home, some of which were used to access pornography and materials that were sexually suggestive or racially offensive, according to a new watchdog report.
A whistleblower alerted investigators to a “troubling pattern of conduct” and abuse of government resources by a Washington-based senior official, who used taxpayer dollars for “wasteful foreign travel,” and falsified time and attendance records, the Commerce Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) found.
When one of the unnamed official’s subordinates cooperated with investigators, the official “engaged in retaliation” against that person, they found. She also tried to hamper the investigation by remotely erasing evidence from one of her government-issued tablet devices.
The senior official admitted to investigators that she would have no qualms about accessing pornography from a government-issued device as long as it was not during work hours, or while connected to a government network. Under those circumstances, she did “not feel like [she was] doing anything inappropriate.”
“Given her position as a manager within an office responsible for providing administrative management functions to an entire division within her operating until, senior official should understand that such use of government property is unquestionably inappropriate regardless of when and how it occurs,” the investigators wrote.
She did not need to get a supervisor’s approval to receive new IT equipment, and so over a period of several months collected “no less than seven government-issued computer resources at her private residence, including two desktop computers, three laptop computers and at least two iPad tablets” which were all kept at her personal residence. Her family members created their own user profiles on the devices and used them for personal business for over 30 hours per week.
The watchdog found that on many days, this official misused the telework policy. On at least one occasion, she claimed to work a full eight-hour day when she actually worked “as little as twenty minutes,” the report says.
The senior official also booked a flight abroad and sought “reimbursement from the government for the expenses associated with her own personal, non-official travel plans.” Investigators calculated that cost taxpayers about $1,365.
This official was “at a minimum, indifferent to her obligation to conserve government property and resources,” wrote investigators. The report concludes that this employee’s abuse of resources is “deeply troubling … as it calls into question senior official’s compliance with her obligations as a government employee.”
She is not the only federal employee found to have been abusing the government’s telework policy. Within the past month, another watchdog report found that a federal employee had received $25,500, or over four months of pay, for work he didn’t do.
