Gail Alexan­der

The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion has start­ed in­ves­ti­gat­ing the Ix­anos con­tract award is­sue con­cern­ing for­mer Plan­ning Min­is­ter Mary King, it was con­firmed yes­ter­day. An of­fi­cial source in­di­cat­ed in­ter­views on the is­sue be­gan Wednes­day af­ter King was fired by the Prime Min­is­ter on Tues­day for al­leged "im­prop­er ac­tion." It is al­leged that King failed to dis­close in­ter­est in Ix­anos Ltd, a com­pa­ny which won a $100,000 Web site de­vel­op­ment con­tract from the Plan­ning Min­istry which King had head­ed. King is al­so al­leged to have "par­tic­i­pat­ed" in the se­lec­tion process and placed her sec­re­tary on the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee which rec­om­mend­ed the award to Ix­anos. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, who said King breached the In­tegri­ty Act, said a case had been made out to war­rant re­fer­ral to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion.

Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter be­ing fired, King called for her name to be cleared and wrote the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion seek­ing probe of the is­sue on her be­half. Among first to be in­ter­viewed by com­mis­sion of­fi­cials has been Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Ju­liana Jo­han-Boodram. Jo­han-Boodram had giv­en a state­ment to Ram­lo­gan who re­viewed the is­sue to re­port to the Prime Min­is­ter be­fore King's ap­point­ment was ter­mi­nat­ed. Apart from King, the com­mis­sion is ex­pect­ed to in­ter­view Plan­ning Min­istry per­son­nel in­volved, in­clud­ing se­nior of­fi­cers, plus le­gal and in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy of­fi­cials and oth­ers. The per­ma­nent sec­re­tary is the min­istry's most se­nior ad­min­is­tra­tive ac­count­ing of­fi­cer.

Oth­er af­fil­i­at­ed par­ties yes­ter­day al­lud­ed to "omis­sions" in state­ments on the mat­ter, query­ing how the con­tract was "al­lowed" to go to King's fam­i­ly firm when they said the head of the min­istry's le­gal di­vi­sion was on the ten­ders' com­mit­tee along with Jo­han-Boodram. They said the of­fi­cers would have seen that the King firm had re­ceived high marks in the grad­ing and should have queried it. They said King's for­mer as­sis­tant was on the eval­u­a­tion team, since the min­istry lacked tech­ni­cal peo­ple to pro­vide the nec­es­sary ex­per­tise in the area of the con­tract. They said the min­istry on­ly had two IT pro­gram­mers and two tech­ni­cians. While agree­ing that the min­istry should have sought ex­per­tise in­stead of us­ing the as­sis­tant, they, how­ev­er, point­ed out that King's as­sis­tant on the team gave high­er marks to two oth­er com­pa­nies in­stead of Ix­anos. On a chart tagged "Web site Ven­dor Se­lec­tion," it is not­ed that King's as­sis­tant gave Ix­anos a score of 70, while she gave Sight­fac­to­ry Ltd a score of 85 and Arel­la Con­cepts a score of 75.

The source said a ser­vice lev­el agree­ment-for Ix­anos to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al as­sis­tance-was sought on­ly for three months, since the min­istry lacked the tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise to main­tain the Web site and was nec­es­sary to en­sure live trans­mis­sions on the site did not break down. They said the three-month time frame was not men­tioned in Boodram's state­ment. It had been agreed the min­istry would ad­ver­tise for a tech­ni­cian af­ter the three months, they said, not­ing that such spe­cial­ist com­pa­nies nor­mal­ly pro­vide fol­low-up ex­per­tise when a new project was com­plet­ed. On Wednes­day, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al said when doc­u­ments on the mat­ter were sent to him and the Prime Min­is­ter by King last Oc­to­ber, every­thing ap­peared above board. Ram­lo­gan said, how­ev­er, that "rum­blings" em­anat­ed on the is­sue around East­er and he took a clos­er look at the mat­ter.

Yes­ter­day, a Gov­ern­ment source con­firmed that the State was spurred to ac­tion this year, af­ter the per­ceived ef­fort for Ix­anos Ltd "to get more work" on the con­tract, PS Jo­han-Boodram's state­ments and fur­ther by King's com­ments in a re­cent news­pa­per ar­ti­cle. Mean­while, a min­istry of­fi­cial said heads of de­part­ments, as well as King and Jo­han-Boodram, were present in the room the day the ten­ders' box was opened in a spe­cial func­tion since it was an "ex­tra­or­di­nary" event, be­ing the first ten­der of the new min­istry. Doc­u­ments and prices were put in­to a vault which could not be touched, they added. They said the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee was formed in a sim­i­lar at­mos­phere "like a so­cial func­tion" with the PS, deputy PS, le­gal di­vi­sion and ad­min­is­tra­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tives, as well as King, present.

Min­istry of­fi­cials said they were told ear­li­er this week they could pub­licly not re­spond to al­le­ga­tions against them or state­ments they were al­leged to have made in Jo­han-Boodram's state­ment, be­cause of "Pub­lic Ser­vice reg­u­la­tions." A Plan­ning of­fi­cial said yes­ter­day that fi­nal pay­ment on the $100,000 con­tract had not been made to Ix­anos Ltd. They said Ix­anos re­ceived "about $55,000" so far. The Web site in con­tention is at pes­r­ga.gov.tt. King's pic­ture was re­moved from the Web site im­me­di­ate­ly as she was fired.

PROJECT TIME­LINE

Oc­to­ber 1, 2010-Bids opened.

Oc­to­ber 8, 2010-First ten­ders. com­mit­tee meet­ing hand­ing over of let­ters for bid.

Oc­to­ber 4-8-Eval­u­a­tion of bids.

Oc­to­ber 8-Meet­ing of eval­u­a­tion team and sub­mis­sion of scores.

Oc­to­ber 10-Eval­u­a­tion marks on bid­ders sub­mit­ted.

Oc­to­ber 15-Con­tract ne­go­ti­a­tion with cho­sen ven­dor (Ix­anos Ltd).

Oc­to­ber 20-Ven­dor agreed to the re­quest and sub­mit­ted re­vised pro­pos­als.

No­vem­ber 3-Con­tract signed with ven­dor.

No­vem­ber 8-First pay­ment.

No­vem­ber 25-Min­is­ter (King) re­quests re­port from ten­der com­mit­tee mem­bers and oth­er par­ties on con­tract.

March 22, 2011-De­liv­ery of Web site.

March 25 , 2011-Web site starts.

(Source: Min­istry)