After Voice of OC raised issues regarding a $254,609 bonus for Orange County’s computer contractor, county staffers pulled the issue from last month’s public meeting.
This week, the bonus is back on.
County staff says that ACS won its bonus because a series of questionnaires submitted to county computer users found they were satisfied with the company’s work.
Because of the happiness quotient, the company gets the bonus.
Except, according to staff, the questions were designed in conjunction with ACS then handed off to a third-party company, which formally conducted the survey.
ACS has an 11-year, $266 million contract to handle the county’s computer needs; the contract expires in June.
According to the county’s performance auditor, the survey bonus has been in limbo for years, with the county and ACS fighting over how to structure the survey. The auditor suggested that real surveys be designed to help the county move forward as it bids out the computer contract next year.
“This situation is particularly troubling, as some members of the CEO/IT Executive Team have expressed dissatisfaction with ACS over the last several years, in which case there is a real incentive on the part of the County to collect the survey results in order to substantiate and document any poor performance and assign the appropriate level of financial penalty,” read a performance auditors report in June.
Yet despite those kinds of concerns, ACS now comes out with a bonus.