IBM Barred from Doing Business with the US Government - Over a Contract It Didn't Win

[The Straight Story]

IBM Barred from Doing Business with the US Government - Over a Contract It Didn't Win
If the bar lasts long enough, IBM's competitors could have a field day

See, last Friday – out of the blue according to its account – it found out that the Environmental Protection Agency had temporarily barred it from seeking any further business with the US government because of some alleged ethical hanky-panky connected with an $84 million contract that the EPA put out for bid in March of 2006.

IBM disclosed the highly unusual and potential devastating news after the market closed on Monday. It could take the government a year to investigate and cost IBM over a billion dollars in new business – and that’s only money, not reputation.

Not only that but the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia has issued IBM and certain of its employees with grand jury subpoenas demanding documents and testimony “regarding interactions between employees of the EPA and certain IBM employees,” IBM said in a press release.

IBM didn’t even win the contract, which called for modernizing the agency’s financial management system. It went to the CGI Group a year ago. IBM protested and won the protest, which stopped any work and put the contract in limbo waiting for the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to evaluate the protest.es Council, quoted by Federal News Radio.

http://iphone.sys-con.com/read/531351.htm

[JDPriestly]

1. Members of IBM's Board in 2007

Cathleen Black
President
Hearst Magazines

Kenneth I. Chenault
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
American Express Company

Juergen Dormann
Chairman of the Board
ABB Ltd

Michael L. Eskew
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
United Parcel Service, Inc.

Shirley Ann Jackson
President
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Minoru Makihara
Senior Corporate Advisor and
former Chairman
Mitsubishi Corporation

Lucio A. Noto
Managing Partner
Midstream Partners LLC
James W. Owens
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Caterpillar Inc.

Samuel J. Palmisano
Chairman, President and
Chief Executive Officer
IBM

Joan E. Spero
President
Doris Duke Charitable Foundation

Sidney Taurel
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Eli Lilly and Company

Charles M. Vest*
President Emeritus
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Lorenzo H. Zambrano
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
CEMEX, S.A.B. de C.V.

http://www.ibm.com/annualreport/2006/dao.shtml

An IBM retiree submitted the following letter at the 2007 annual meeting of shareholders:

“Offshoring Proposal Speech by Mike Saville – Proponent”

Good Morning Sam, IBM Board of Directors, Shareholders, Fellow IBMers and Ladies and Gentlemen.

. . .
In the last five years, the USA employee headcount has remained flat at 127,000 while IBM India has grown to 55,000 with 100 Thousand employees projected in India by 2010 Sam, last year you announced $6 Billion would be spent to expand in India , the same as the total IBM research and Development in the US annually.

Where did all this IT talent come from in India ? I remember reading a decade ago how India had more than a million Computer Science graduates. I could not understand why there were so many when most Indians Citizens, could not afford Personal Computers. Curiosity led me to discover that the Indian Government identified IT as a national Strategy to generate employment internationally. A program similar to the “GI bill” after WWII. India was cranking out millions of Government sponsored IT graduates that paid off thanks to the explosion of the Internet that enabled “remote computer programming and support by wire”.

Meanwhile, in the USA, contributions from Corporations dropped by 60 Per cent to IT programs in US Universities, with the exception of an IT school of 250 students in my home town, Northface, now known as Neumont, where an IT curriculum costs $80,000 for a two year program. Many of the 125 graduates go to work for IBM and others. We, especially Orin Hatch and his friends in the court, thank you for your contribution to our kids but it is only 125 students a year?

I guess it is easier to capitalize on a Country who pays for their children’s education unlike the parents in the USA who go into hock, funding their kid’s college.

. . . .

http://www.allianceibm.org/mikesavillespeech2007.htm

Couldn't have happened to a nicer company.