The lead IT official from one federal agency known to be plagued by scandals kicked off what one person has labeled “the most partisan meeting I have ever attended” as a number of despondent bureaucrats went into what can only be called a collective meltdown the day after the results of the 2016 election went public and declared Donald Trump as the president, explained internal messages recently made public.
As the chief information officer for the General Services Administration (GSA), David Shive spoke out to one key technology department as part of a “Town Hall” that took place back on the 9th of November when he issued a number of worrying statements. The department he issued the comments to, the Technology Transformation Service (TTS), later went on to be cited for “gross misconduct” and a number of security violations.
“That was the most partisan meeting I have ever attended in government. David Shive joking that he dressed like a Republican (because he wore a suit and tie?) and concern about the ‘white men’ and what steps needed to be taken to protect us from the new President-elect (‘having allies’),” stated a message in Slack from one attendee later. “I’m not even a Republican and I’m offended! The point of the meeting was to reassure the staff that everything will be all right and that certainly could have been done without the copious partisan overtones.”
Recent reports have indicated that the inspector general of the GSA discovered that TTS blatantly tricked federal agencies into openly violating security standards by not making use of facial recognition in software created to be the locking system for extremely sensitive information, reasoning privately that software of that kind was actually racist. It gathered $197 million in part by falsely telling its funders and customers that it was entirely compliant with all standards put in place by NIST that required biometrics. The IG also discovered “gross mismanagement” which took place while the group was sidetracked by things such as pronouns and creating a new social justice robot, and put Shive at fault for a complete lack of oversight.
Newly discovered internal chat logs found via the Freedom of Information Act indicate that the central tech agency for the government went through a complete top-to-bottom psychological meltdown in the wake of Trump being announced the winner of the presidential race, with the majority of the group thinking that the work they were doing was solely a means to Democratic agenda, not provide services at the direction of the government.
Despite the meltdown, a few of the employees were stunned by the heavily partisan tone exposed by Shive and another thought the fears were entirely overblown, other employees’ internal chat logs expressed that this type of extreme partisanship was very widespread. Messages discovered in the FoA request included a number of quotes from and reactions to the Zoom meeting and questions that were submitted to the speakers.
Overall, it seems that despite the fact that they were working comfortable IT jobs and many even worked remotely, they all devolved into victimhood claiming to fear for their “safety.”
