FederalDaily - July 27, 2005
Contractor Pays $42 Million for False Travel Claims
Earlier this month the Department of Justice announced that Price Waterhouse
Coopers (PWC) agreed to pay $41.9 million to settle allegations that it made
false claims to federal agencies for travel reimbursement. PWC received rebates
on its travel expenses from travel and credit card companies, airlines, hotels,
rental car agencies and travel service providers. The government alleges that
PWC did not consistently disclose the existence of these travel rebates and
did not reduce its travel reimbursement claims by the amounts of the rebates.
The government’s complaint alleged that PWC knowingly presented claims
for payment to the U.S. for amounts greater than the travel expenses actually
incurred.
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Senator Acts to Delay BRAC
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., introduced three Base Realignment And Closure (BRAC)-related
amendments to the Defense Authorization bill. The amendments are (1) delay
base closures until completion of a number of pending planning studies and
conditions, including the Quadrennial Defense Review, and deployment home of
substantially all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan (2) extend whistleblower
protections to members of the armed services who might disagree with the Pentagon’s
BRAC recommendations and desire to share that information with the BRAC Commission,
and (3) a variant of the first amendment that would allow Congress the discretion
to remove bases from the BRAC closure list once the same long-term planning
studies and conditions were met.
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Study Shows Brain Cancer among Gulf War Vets
A research paper published in the August 2005 issue of the American Journal
of Public Health finds that Gulf War veterans who may have been exposed
to nerve agents during the March 1991 weapons demolitions in Khamisiyah,
Iraq, appear to have a higher risk for brain cancer death than veterans
who were not exposed. Researchers compared the causes of death in a
group of 100,487 possibly exposed Army Gulf War veterans with those
among 224,980 Army Gulf War veterans who were not exposed to nerve
agents. Exposed veterans were about twice as likely to have died from brain
cancer as unexposed veterans, corresponding to roughly 12 excess deaths due
to brain cancer among the 100,487 exposed veterans over a nine-year period.
The study's authors said additional research is needed to confirm their findings
of a higher brain cancer death risk for some Gulf War veterans.
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GAO Reports Problems with DoD Business Modernization
The Department of Defense (DoD) is required to develop, by September 2005,
a business enterprise architecture (BEA) and a transition plan. To modernize
its business operations, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said it
is “essential” for DoD to develop and use a well-defined BEA. However,
it does not have such an architecture—even after spending almost four
years and about $318 million. In particular, DOD has not done the following:
- achieved stakeholder buy-in;
- identified measurable goals to be achieved; or
- defined the workforce capabilities that it needs.
GAO said much remains to be accomplished to establish an effective architecture
program. Until it does, DoD’s business systems modernization effort will
remain a high-risk program.
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