The Pentagon

The Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE) was widely-reported to cost $22,000,000. Here are one, two, three, links to reports about SERVE's $22 million cost.

So, when Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz decided, at the end of January, 2004, not to use SERVE to collect votes from soldiers in November, 2004, it seemed reasonable to ask the Pentagon how much money it would save by calling off the use of SERVE nine months before its intended use.

This reporter sent an e-mail to the designated press officer at DOD, asking how much money would be saved. Major Sandra Burr wrote back the next day, telling me that all $22 million had already been spent, nine months before the program was to be used in the November, 2004, elections.

Finding this statement somewhat startling, this reporter wrote back to Major Burr, asking her to explain how SERVE could possibly have succeeded if it had run out of money nine months before it had to do its job.

She never answered that question. So this reporter submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act to the Pentagon asking for all of its materials on the origins, funding, organization, and work of the SERVE project, with particular emphasis on the decision not to use it in the November, 2004, elections.

The Pentagon's initial reaction was to declare that this reporter was not a reporter, and would need to may a large sum for the gathering and copying of the requested information.

After being confronted with massive documentary evidence to the contrary, the Department of Defense relented, reversed course, and declared that this reporter was a "representative of the media," and therefore entitled to get the requested information at no cost.

Two months later, a one-inch stack of paper and a CD arrived at the offices of Etopia Media Voting News from the Directorate for Freedom of Information and Security Review, supposedly with most of the requested data.

There was almost nothing of any use in it, except the fact that SERVE was supposed to end on March 31, 2005, rather than in November of 2004, meaning that, according to the February statement of DOD, the non-existent money that SERVE had no more of would need to last 14, rather than nine, months.

However, on the very last of the FOIA pages there appeared a list of the major SERVE contractors and the estimated amounts that they could expect to receive under their contracts. Here's that list:

SUMMARY OF SERVE CONTRACTS

1. Accenture for system development and deployment, awarded under NIH CIOSP2i contract, estimated value $24,059,000

2. BearingPoint for independent system testing, awarded under NIH CIOSP2i contract, estimated value $605,000.

3. California Institute of Technology for project evaluation, awarded by DCC-W, estimated value $1,392,000.

4. CSC/Dyncorp for project management support, awarded by DCC-W, estimated value $531,000.

Summarizing the summary:

Accenture $24,000,000
BearingPoint $605,000
Caltech $1,400,000
CSC/Dyncorp $530,000

Total $26,535,000

More about these numbers in a minute.

Curious about the newly-discovered fact that SERVE had five additional months to run on no money, and still curious about the unaccounted for financial anomalies in SERVE's funding, the reporter, on June 21st, wrote again to Major Burr, reminding her of what she'd said in February about SERVE having depleted its funds and asking, taking into account the new information contained in the FOIA materials, how SERVE "intended to be funded during the final 15 [sic (it should have been 14)] months of its existence."

Major Burr's response was to say that "First of all, I have no record of telling you there was no money left."

This was an amazing statement, given that Major Burr had e-mailed this reporter immediately following DOD's decision not to use SERVE in the November elections to say that, out of the $22 million reportedly budgeted for SERVE, "The project cost figures from FY02 to date are $22 million," after which she re-iterated this point by saying "There is no saved money."

So this reporter wrote back to Major Burr, telling her "Attached please find PDF copies of [ 1, 2, 3] e-mails we exchanged earlier this year, which should provide you with a "record of telling you there was no money left."

This drew an even less responsive response, in which Major Burr says that "Since there is a report being prepared on this, I can't provide anything further at this time.   Best to sort this out once report is done and I think it will be much clearer then."

That was obviously the end of that particular method of getting any information, so the reporter launched a new, two-pronged approach that would avoid needing to participate in the particular brand of charade apparently favored by the Pentagon.

He called the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, on June 22nd and asked if they had done an audit of SERVE. They said they hadn't, but that they'd be glad to if asked to do so by a member, preferably the chair or ranking member, of either the House or Senate Armed Services Committee.

Next stop, Capitol Hill. The reporter prepared a request for an audit of SERVE and sent it to a minority staffer at the House Armed Services Committee and one in the offices of U.S. Senator Carl Levin, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

To give the request some urgency, mention was made in the letter of the pending decision in the Congress regarding the future existence of SERVE, which has been eliminated in the House version of the 2005 Defense Authorization Bill and rescheduled and extended in the Senate version.

Who would want to continue a program that uses up all its money 14 months before its scheduled completion?

Also of interest is this statement on page 10 of the NITAAC Statement of Work (SOW), System Integration Support for the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE), paragraph 5.6: "Task 6 Prepare SERVE Technical Performance Summary. The contractor shall collect and maintain comprehensive system performance data for the date of initial operation (January 1, 2004) until the system is shutdown following the certification of election results (December 2004)."

If you're paying someone to plow a field, plant a crop, tend it, harvest it, and process it, and then you decide, in the midst of the plowing, to call the whole thing off, and you're doing it at public expense, is it right to pay the contractor as if it had completed all the work?

Is it right to pay the contractor to "evaluate" the "lessons learned" from a project that is halted before the core technology is in place, before it's deployed, people are trained on it, or it's used? Possibly.

Recall the list above of the major contractors on the SERVE project. Contractor #3 was the California Institute of Technology, which was hired by the Pentagon to perform "project evaluation," at an estimated cost of $1,392,000.

In an interview conducted today with Caltech Professor of Political Science R. Michael Alvarez, Ph.D., head of the SERVE evaluation project (whose price tag, according to the university's press release, is $1.8 million), indicated that even though SERVE had not been "fielded," there was a lot learned from the project and that he was continuing to work on its "final report" for FVAP (Federal Voting Assistance Program).

Professor Alvarez, whose online "biographical sketch" says he is working, with Thad Hall (his co-head of the SERVE evaluation project) on "a study of the feasibility of Internet voting" called "Point, Click and Vote," pointed out that the $1.8 million did not come as a grant, but that the evaluation project submits a monthly invoice for work performed, collecting approximately $100,000 per month during the 18-month period of its contract.

Since Professor Alvarez is still being paid in June, it's hard to understand why the Pentagon spokesperson, Major Burr, would have said in February that all of SERVE's money is gone. Something about this doesn't, if you'll pardon the expression, add up.

One can only wonder what BearingPoint ($605,000), CSC/Dyncorp ($530,000), and, especially Accenture ($24,000,000) will have to say about getting paid in full for their work on a very incomplete project.


To participate in a poll about what Congress ought to do about SERVE, click here.