bullcrap.
The state worker who unwittingly ran an improper child-support check on the man known as Joe the Plumber told lawmakers yesterday that a deputy director later "dictated" how she was supposed to cover it up.
Vanessa Niekamp, an administrator for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services' Office of Child Support and a 15-year state employee, said that when Deputy Director Doug Thompson came into her office, "He appeared very upset, his neck was bright red, and he was shaking. He closed my door."
Thompson told her she must write an e-mail to the agency's information-security officer, and then "dictated word for word" what she wrote, Niekamp said. He also reminded her that she could be fired at any time, she said.
Situation: "Oh God, there could be real trouble about this; let's get it covered up quick!" As opposed to, oh, trying to do the right thing about it. Couldn't have that, no...
Happily, Niekamp actually seems to care about things like the law, and security:
"Within an hour, I took the rest of the day off -- again using my vacation time -- and went directly to the office of the inspector general. I told them everything I knew about what happened."
Niekamp took another day of vacation yesterday to testify before the House State Government and Elections Committee about legislation that calls for the firing of any unclassified state employee who improperly accesses confidential personal information.
And the only thing keeping Niekamp from being screwed over is the wide public knowledge of this crap. And you know her 'superiors' will try it anyway, most likely; it's the standard crooked/scared/jerk bureaucrat response to someone telling an inconvenient truth.
I don't like that 'unclassified' part; it should be 'any state employee'.
"Doug told me that the person Carri had asked me to look up was Joe the Plumber -- the one who was talked about in the national news. He said he needed my help explaining something," Niekamp said.
"Doug then told me I must write an e-mail to our agency's information-security officer to explain why the file had been accessed. He turned my computer screen so he could see it and dictated word for word what he wanted me to write. ...
"He then told me that we needed to make sure that we answer questions about what happened the same way, so that our versions were not different from each other. Before he said that, he reminded me that I was an unclassified employee -- which, as you may know, is someone who can be fired without cause."
Niekamp said she knew the checks were improper because the staff undergoes training and must read and sign a form explaining when they can access confidential and personal information maintained by the department.
"Both Doug and Carri can access the (child-support) system and could have accessed a file without my involvement," Niekamp said. "To this day, I do not understand why they asked me to look at this information when they could have easily done this themselves."
Because they're used to telling other people to do things, and it wasn't until the heat started that they realized they'd screwed the pooch. So they needed you to cover up for them, and threw in the threat of firing to back it up.
Which comes back to the 'unclassified' bullcrap; someone like that can be fired at any time for any reason, this needs to address the classified employees, the people in charge of this mess.
Now we'll see if the authorities there actually care about trying to protect these damned systems from abuse.
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