this is a true story which everyone must read.
many years ago, i had a conversation with an governmental agency official.
this individual’s jobs involved agency audits. in other words, this individual oversought agency programs.
the agency had a pay incentive program for workers with college and advanced degrees. a degree was rewarded extra cash beyond regular salary.
this individual audited the pay incentive program. to do so, this individual combed through through personnel files and started to verify the diplomas and degrees used to get the raise. after attempting to verify the degrees, a startling revelation was made. a large percentage the degrees listed to get the bonus money were bogus.
this individual brought reported these initial findings to upper management. there was a consensus reached that, if the audit went any further, there would be a significant likelihood that a large number of employees would have to be terminated for falsely representing their degrees. the number was estimated to be so large that it would impact on the agency’s operation.
thus, a decision was made. upper management made the decision to not go further. they cancelled the audit. as a result, even though they knew that there was a significant likelihood that a number of the incentives were undeserving and warranting discipline and termination, they decided to continue to pay out the incentives. for the agency, the alternative was simply to much to bare. from that day forward, the agency knowingly acted in concert with employee wrongdoers.
in sum, the situation’s root was both of poor management and implementation. this was compounded by the failure to take earlier audits concerning employees. in failing to do so, the problem became so large and there were so many individuals involved that, as many politicians say, the agency was “too big to fail” and they looked the other way. the government became co-conspirators to their employees’ lies to receive undue compensation.
this story is a cautionary story for government agencies who do not take strict controls to make sure that matters are done in a truthful and honest fashion. this is cautionary tale to the public as to how the government can be placed in a situation where they will be deceitful rather than be honorable.
be well!!
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