WASHINGTON, July 28 (UPI) -- Democrats in Congress are grilling the Federal Emergency Management Agency over its outsourcing of an ID verification contract.
In a July 11 letter to FEMA Director R. David Paulison obtained by Government Executive Wednesday, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Rep. Bob Etheridge, D-N.C., ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Investigations, demanded details on the award of a $1.6 million contract to ChoicePoint. They asked FEMA to respond by July 24 about its choice of the private company to verify the identities of disaster assistance applicants. But a committee staffer told GovEexec.com that as of Thursday, no response had arrived.
The Democrats urged FEMA to explain whether it solicited bids for the deal, whether ChoicePoint will be able to use the data it collects for commercial purposes and what steps the contractor is using to secure the information it gathers, the report said.
The Democrats pointed to a 2005 incident where ChoicePoint sold 145,000 people's information to a con artist posing as a businessman. The letter also cited a report of ChoicePoint mistakenly saying people had criminal records when none existed.
"It appears that ChoicePoint may have had serious problems with determining data accuracy," the lawmakers wrote.
FEMA did not respond to requests for comment on the letter, GovExec.com said. In response to questions earlier this week, an agency spokesman noted that ChoicePoint already had a deal with the Library of Congress. FEMA's agreement was attached as a "bridge contract."
Matt Furman, a company spokesman, told GovExec.com that ChoicePoint would be able to catch more fraudulent claims in the future. Last year, FEMA took disaster assistance applications via phone that turned out to be fraudulent, he said.
