*NEWS*DEFENCE FORCE CLEARED/COPIER DEAL

[Anonymous]

Defence Force photocopier deal cleared
OCT 2006
Audit
New Zealand has cleared the Defence Force of wrongdoing over its
handling of a multimillion-dollar contract for photocopiers that double
as printers.An anonymous whistleblower claimed a month ago that the
Defence Force breached guidelines issued by government security agency
GCSB by choosing equipment from Fuji Xerox over rivals that tendered
equipment that had a higher security rating, and which was in one case
cheaper.The whistleblower, who appeared to have detailed knowledge of
the tender, claimed to work for another government department.Audit New
Zealand has spent about three weeks looking into the allegations, but
says it has no concerns about the deal and won’t be undertaking a more
detailed inquiry.Sector manager Gareth Ellis says auditors did enough
to satisfy themselves the allegations were unfounded and that the
Defence Force “appropriately followed” GCSB’s guidelines.Mr Ellis says
Audit New Zealand did identify a number of “process issues –
opportunities for improvement in future tender processes”.”We will be
raising those with NZDF, but we don’t believe any of those issues
unduly affected the integrity of this particular process,” he says.The
finding will do little to clear up uncertainty over the status of the
GCSB guidelines, which are designed to prevent information processed by
multifunction devices from falling into the wrong hands.GCSB says
agencies should select devices that have a higher evaluation assurance
level over devices that have a lower rating and that they must do so if
they are used to handle secure or classified information.However, GCSB
conceded in May that some departments were probably ignoring the
security edict.The Fuji Xerox multifunction devices selected by the
Defence Force had an EAL 2 rating, while competitors Ricoh, Konica
Minolta and Sharp tendered products with higher ratings. 

[Author]

October 10, 2006 at 11:20 AM