First Take
Comment and commentary on events in government and technology
Safavian, Kumar join list of felons I've met
I’ve personally known or met several felons. You live long enough... Most I can’t tell you about. But two are public figures: David Safavian and Sanjay Kumar. Safavian, of course, was the short-term administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy. He was sentenced to 18 months for lying about his connections to the current political third rail, Jack Abramoff. Safavian visited our offices shortly after taking office for a sitdown with GCN and Washington Technology editors. He was blunt and possessed definite ideas of where to take OFPP. He didn’t strike me as felon material.
Kumar is the former chief executive of CA Inc. I met him briefly once or twice briefly over the years. Back when he was fraudulently inflating the company’s results, it was known as Computer Associates. Kumar will be grippin’ the bars for 12 years, until he is 56.
Forrest Gump-like though my acquaintance was with both cons, it still is both thrilling and sad to think of them heading for jail. If you’ve ever visited someone in prison—and I have more than once—you realize that the mere fact of incarceration is gosh darn fearsome.
There’s a sort of similarity between CA and OFPP. CA for a long time was an exciting company to watch only if you liked financial manipulation. It made a long string of acquisitions. From a product standpoint, CA is more like a hardware store. It offers a zillion prosaic products for the workaday world of keeping enterprise computer systems running. Nothing approaching the excitement of Grand Theft Auto, but all of it meeting basic, even crucial requirements.
OFPP is concerned with the driest of activities—rules for government procurement. But, as we all know, even a small adjustment in the rules can change markets. No one normal keeps the voluminous Federal Acquisition Regulation on the nightstand for evening reading, but anyone selling to the government misunderstands or ignores it at their peril.
It should be noted: Although Kumar and Safavian brought shame more to themselves than to their organizations. The nature of their crimes didn’t go to the heart of the organizations themselves. That is, Kumar’s CA didn’t cheat customers or make defective products. And Safavian didn’t personally gain by subverting contracting.
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