Computer Sciences Corporation: A Working System Was Part of the Deal

Computer Sciences Corporation agreed to pay $389,355 to resolve allegations that it misrepresented the functionality of the Hanford medical-records system, telling the Department of Energy it worked and met requirements. Two former employees brought the whistleblower case. For someone who knows what a government-contracted system actually does, the allegation is recognizable: the customer gets an assurance that the people working with the software may know it cannot support.

What Computer Sciences Corporation Was Contracted to Deliver

CSC held a Department of Energy prime contract to provide occupational-health services for Hanford Site workers from 2005 through 2012. As part of that contract, it had to implement an electronic medical-records system for those workers’ medical records.

In this civilian government IT procurement case, the software was part of the occupational-health service the department bought.

What CSC Represented About the System

The government alleged that CSC submitted false claims and statements telling the Department of Energy that the electronic medical-records system was functional, would operate as intended, and met contractual and department requirements. Those alleged representations are the center of this software false functionality case.

For an implementation team, the comparison reaches beyond whether software was delivered. The government alleged that CSC misrepresented the system’s ability to do the job required under the contract. An insider who understands that job can explain the difference between delivering software and delivering the capability the customer bought.

A contractor controls information the customer needs to judge its performance. The person communicating with the agency and the person working with the system may see different parts of the same project. Bringing those views together can explain how a confident account of performance reached the buyer while the underlying work told a different story.

We expect a contractor hired to implement a records system to deliver more than confidence about it. Under the government’s allegation, the assurance that the system worked was itself false. A promise dressed as performance.

Why Accurate Health Records Mattered at Hanford

Hanford workers risk exposure to radioactive and hazardous materials, making accurate health records particularly important. The settlement announcement emphasized that worker-health context.

We see a modest settlement against a serious promise: accurate health records for people doing hazardous work. The alleged false assurance concerned a system bought to serve those workers. That is more than an office convenience.

The Former Employees’ Case and the Settlement

Two former CSC employees filed the qui tam case that raised the allegations resolved by the settlement. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Washington announced the resolution on October 30, 2018, following a joint investigation with the Department of Energy Office of Inspector General.

The office negotiated the settlement, and its announcement also provided for a collective whistleblower reward to the former employees. Their knowledge brought the functionality allegations into a case under the False Claims Act.

A whistleblower case under the False Claims Act can pay 15% to 30% of what the government recovers.

The Same Question in a Website-Assessment Contract

Foresee Results and Verint Americas agreed to a $7 million settlement in 2023 over allegations that they supplied a different website-assessment method from the one promised to the Interior Department’s Federal Consulting Group. The contract called for the American Customer Satisfaction Index methodology. The government alleged that the companies used another method while representing that they used the promised one.

The parallel is the difference between the purchased service and the contractor’s account of what it delivered. In CSC’s case, the disputed assurance concerned the medical-records system’s functionality. In Foresee’s, it concerned how the website assessment was performed. A customer can receive a product or service while the contractor allegedly misrepresents a feature that was part of the bargain.

What Proof Do You Need as a Whistleblower?

For a functionality case, useful proof connects the promised capability, what the system actually did, what the contractor told the agency, and the claim for payment. Our whistleblower experts work through those connections with you, starting with the part of the project you know.

The contract determines which records matter. Delivery and acceptance records test a promised result. Timesheets and qualifications test hourly work. In a functionality case, we focus on the required capability and what the contractor said about it when seeking payment. A team may have put work into a system while the government’s allegation concerns something else: whether the contractor falsely represented what that system could do.

An invoice, acceptance record and payment record answer different questions. We examine how the contractor’s account of performance connects to the agency’s acceptance and the money paid. A software specialist’s account matters because the payment trail alone cannot explain whether the promised capability was there.

An employee may understand the system’s limits without seeing the agency invoice. A contract administrator may see the assurance and payment request without using the system. We connect those accounts to the same requirement and the same work, then examine what the contractor knew when it made the representation. Your knowledge of one part of the project gives us a place to start.

A 2022 CEUR Workshop Proceedings paper, Public Procurement Fraud Detection and Artificial Intelligence Techniques: A Literature Review, reviews automated fraud-detection methods, including research on the quality and quantity of services delivered. It identifies a practical limit: machine-learning results can be difficult to explain, and reliable historical data can be hard to obtain.

We take that as a reason to put an insider’s explanation beside the records, rather than stop at a suspicious pattern. For a functionality allegation, we want to understand the capability the contract required and the basis for telling the customer it worked. That is where technical knowledge becomes useful to someone outside the project.

You Know What the System Could Do

If you worked on a government system whose capabilities were misrepresented, tell our whistleblower experts what the customer was promised and what you saw. We develop the case with you and bring in government procurement whistleblower lawyers who understand software obligations and false performance claims. We stay beside you as we build your strongest government procurement whistleblower case.