Computer Crime.

• Author: Lynch, Michael W.
• Position: Lack of inventory control leads to theft of equipment from Washington, D.C. schools - Brief Article

Once in a while big thinkers in government come cup with novel ways to assist failing institutions that suck at just about everything. One such brilliant stroke was aimed at improving the famously awful public schools in the District of Columbia. In 1996 President Clinton ordered federal agencies to donate old but useful computer equipment to the schools.

Yet there's always a catch. For a computer to be a teaching tool, it has to make it into a classroom, an event that appears to be exceedingly rare in D.C. An audit by the D.C. inspector general of select district schools found that officials could account for only 35 of the 287 pieces of computer equipment the feds donated between 1997 and 1999.

It's easy to see how such mix-ups could happen, considering that not a single school, nor the district's warehouse, kept an inventory of the equipment. In one instance, 83 pieces of computer equipment intended for Anacostia Senior High School, located in one of D.C.'s poorest neighborhoods, never made it to...