CURMUDGUCATION: USED: King's Big Fail

CURMUDGUCATION: USED: King's Big Fail:
USED: King's Big Fail

 It took Danny Harris's collapse to draw many people's attention. We should have been paying attention sooner.


Harris is the Chief Information Officer for the Department of Education. Prior to taking on that job in 2008, he was with the department's CFO office. He is a government lifer. And he was in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform because the US Department of Education is a big fat cyber-mess.

By late last year, in the wake of the huge security breach at Office of Personnel Managementcomputers, Congress was checking the locks on the doors all around the federal government. And the Department of Education was spectacularly lousy. The Inspector General reported that her office found they could hack their way into USED systems with no particularly great effort. The department's data includes at least 139 million different social security numbers (so, almost half the US population), along with oversight of a trillion dollars.

Congress worked Harris like a chew toy back in November, at which time he did himself no favors by giving his department a 7 out of 10 when everyone else was giving the department F's and D's. So his recent collapse-inducing appearance in front of the House committee is the latest in a series.

The House Oversight Committee is headed by Jason Chaffetz. Chaffetz is an interesting story in his own right. The Utah Representative arrived at Brigham Young as a Jewish Democrat and left as a Mormon Republican. He earned early attention as one of the legislators who slept on a cot in his office rather than renting pricey DC digs. He's the guy who barely let the head of Planned Parenthood get a word in edgewise and ginned up the misleading cancer care vs. abortions chart. He's taken on the Secret Service, and he's also the guy who threatened to have US Marshalls hunt down Flint emergency manager Darnell Earley and drag him before Congress. And he's the guy leading the attempted interrogation of that odious pharma-troll Martin Shkreli this week. All in all, it seems safe to say that Chaffetz isn't afraid of a little tussle, though he is noted by many as a Representative who can play well bipartisanly, particularly within his committee.

All of this bode poorly for the Department of Ed in general and Danny Harris in particular when Chaffetz decided that Harris was the problem, both in terms of managerial skills and professional ethics. This last hearing was an odd mish-mosh of continued grilling about cyber-security, the ethical problems of Harris running a side business, and rigged awarding of department contracts to Harris's friend. Outside vendors are CURMUDGUCATION: USED: King's Big Fail: