As a whistleblower myself, I found this story rather interesting. The local school board has been allegedly in a very round about way outed by its former CFO, who was forced to resign, after it was suggested by the school board that the CFO might be having some kind of relationship with a person that reported to him either directly or indirectly. Now either the CFO or the person whom he may or may not have had a relationship with and or other persons un-named but that might be related to that person, have established a blog to point out conflict of interest issues and other skeletons in the Gwinnett County Public Schools system.
The blog in question is the Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS) Insider and its been up and running for about a month and a half or since about October of 2006. The blog appears to be running without any advertisements, so the blog owners are not currently receiving any financial benefit from their whistleblowing activities.
The Gwinnett Daily Post ran a front page top of the page story about the Blog as it has caught the attention of the local District Attorney Danny Porter. He indicated that he had spoken with some of the blog contributors but had not as yet launched an investigation. He also indicated that an investigation could commence in the future.
Three of the accusations include claims that the school system donated tax funds to the retirement of a pastor, that the county failed to bid out a computer and technology contract, and that a consulting contract was sourced to a member of the Board of Education.
The blog calls for more checks and balances of GCPS and the adoption of benchmarks found in Sorbanes Oxley but not required of school boards. The argument for greater transparency to educate tax payers such that they can keep direct oversight of their tax dollars at work seems to be the theme.
2 comments:
I think we might expect more of this type of whistleblowing in the future. I hope it doesn't turn into witch hunts, but so much is so secret in education (I'm a former teacher) that it is good to have a watchdog group paying attention.
Hi Jan, I agree. My wife is a teacher and I'm a whistle blower myself even though I didn't blow the whistle on the internet.
The idea is definitely attractive. When I look at the repurcussions of taking evidence to the government as I did and what did and didn't happen versus outing the dirty laundry on the internet in a way that generates a lot of noise (some good and some bad) and forces public officials like the DA to take note and at least make a public determination to proceed or not proceed, I think that could be valuable.
To many important decisions are made behind closed doors and may be subject to even more corruption.
On the flip side, if too much is vented through blogs it will all turn into noise and no one will be able to pay attention to anything.
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