OIG completed an investigation into actions taken by Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) officials to award a contract for a two-part organizational assessment focused on BIE schools and their management. The agency's contract specialist alleged that her actions to identify and correct a conflict of interest associated with Brian Drapeaux, the former BIE chief of staff involved with the contract, led to her removal as the contracting officer and replacement by a less experienced employee.
We found that Drapeaux, as well as former BIE Director Keith Moore, had a longstanding friendship with the president of PerGroup, one of several contractors applying for the organizational assessment contract. PerGroup initially was awarded the contract. A public complaint led to recognition of the award as a conflict of interest and, as a result, the contract was terminated. PerGroup then became a subcontractor for the company that eventually received the new contract, in spite of stipulations established by the contract specialist.
We found that the contract specialist's efforts to mitigate the conflict of interest, first through terminating the award and then through placing stipulations to exclude PerGroup from the application process for the second contract (a sole-source solicitation for small, disadvantaged companies), resulted in the contract being transferred from her and given to a less experienced employee. Senior BIE officials involved in this procurement appear to have violated Federal ethics regulations, while other senior BIE officials who knew of the conflict of interest and its ethics implications ignored them during the procurement process.
OIG received a response from the Director, Office of Human Capital Management, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, who reported that administrative action was taken on this matter on September 30, 2014.
NOTE: The report was referred to Kevin K. Washburn, Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs, not to the chief of staff to the Secretary of the Interior as indicated in the Disposition section of the report.