Dive Brief:
- An audit of the New York City Department of Education by the city comptroller's office uncovered what it called "grossly inaccurate" record keeping and the misuse of already purchased resources.
- According to the audit, random visits to nine schools and one administrative office resulted in the discovery that over 2,000 computers and tablets were either missing or unused and in their original packaging.
- The report comes days after comptroller Scott M. Stringer sent a letter to the city's education chancellor, Carmen Farina, criticizing the department for missing out on an estimated $120 million in technology grants due to a 2011 suspension from the federal E-Rate program.
Dive Insight:
“We found that the D.O.E. does not have a centralized inventory control system for hardware, even though it is spending close to $200 million on computers and software,” Stringer told the New York Times. “This was just a sample. My concern is that these findings are just the tip of the iceberg with more than 2,000 D.O.E. sites throughout the city.”
One prime example of the mismanagement is showcased with Public School 168 in the Bronx, where public documents indicated the campus had 10,000 computers. Already a mind-blowing number for an elementary school, the real kicker is not the fact that the school reportedly had so many computers but rather that it had so few. According to the audit, upon visiting the campus, only 10 computers were found.
