And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
MARCH 8, 1999
WEB EXTRA
http://www.fcw.com/pubs/fcw/1999/0308/web-fedwiresenate-3-8-99.html
Senate threatens to outsource trust fund
management
BY L. SCOTT TILLETT ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
The Senate last week said it may opt to turn over to one or
more private companies the management of American Indians'
trust funds, which the United States has overseen for more
than
100 years, because of ongoing management failures.
Although the Clinton administration has begun to spend
millions
of dollars on new computer systems to manage the trust funds,
senators meeting in a joint hearing of the Indian Affairs
Committee and the Energy and Natural Resources Committee
voiced support for outsourcing to industry the management of
the funds. The trust funds represent income due to American
Indians from lands awarded to them by treaties with the U.S.
government but leased to oil, gas and other private industrial
companies.
Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.), chairman of the
Indian Affairs Committee, said he may introduce legislation
that
would take responsibility for trust management away from the
Interior Department. Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska),
chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee, questioned whether the management of the funds
"really belongs within the government."
"There are no excuses. There should be no excuses," said Sen.
Larry Craig (R-Idaho). Many companies manage trust funds
without so much as "a dime" out of place, Craig said. "Why
can't we be smart enough to hire the right people to do the
job?"
At issue is nearly $2.4 billion in money that the Bureau of
Indian
Affairs (BIA) cannot accurately account for, although Interior
Secretary Bruce Babbitt said it has not been stolen. A
group of
American Indians has filed a class-action lawsuit seeking
accurate accounting of the money and an overhaul of the way
Interior manages the funds. In some cases, documents have
been stored in trash bags and others have been soiled by
rodent
droppings, requiring special handling because of a concern the
papers may be carrying the deadly hantavirus. The virus is
caught through contact with rodent droppings.
The Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians, set up
by a 1994 law to sort out the trust problems, last year
awarded
SEI Investments, Oaks, Pa., a five-year, nearly $50 million
contract to replace Interior's 21-year-old Integrated Records
Management System, which the agency used to track trust fund
accounts and payments. The new systems will manage
information on disbursements to more than 300,000 trust
accounts for American Indians and American Indian tribes.
The Office of the Special Trustee has asked Congress for $100
million in fiscal 2000 to continue the task of cleaning up
American Indian trust information, including almost $15
million
to continue developing and deploying the new Trust Fund
Accounting System (TFAS).
Meanwhile, the BIA, separate from the special trustee,
plans to
spend $42 million over the next two years to build the Trust
Asset Accounting and Management System (TAAMS) to
manage information on the American Indian land that the
government leases to private industrial companies. TFAS will
account for distribution of trust money to American Indians'
accounts. Dominic Nessi, program manager for TAAMS, said
Interior plans to integrate TAAMS with TFAS in the future.
Babbitt assured senators on March 3 that progress was being
made with the trusts, explaining that deployment of new
systems
will take place by the end of the year. He characterized
mismanagement of the records as a legacy within the
department. "This problem began on March 3, 1849," Babbitt
testified last week, 150 years after the founding of his
department. "Forty-seven of my predecessors have done
virtually nothing."
Nessi said an information technology contractor will begin
work
March 8 on a data cleanup project at BIA offices in Billings,
Mont. By late June, he said, BIA should move on to the next
step: a pilot test involving new TAAMS software by Artesia
Systems Group, a division of Applied Terravision Systems Inc.,
Dallas.
Artesia president David Orr said getting TAAMS operational
will
be a key component in making sure that money ultimately gets
attributed accurately to American Indians' trust accounts.
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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