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City Of Sacramento Has Hundreds Of Thousands In Electronics Unaccounted For

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — Computers and other electronics that potentially cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars have gone missing, and Sacramento city officials admit they don't know how it happened.

Sacramento city auditor Jorge Oseguera recently found out the city is doing a poor job of keeping track of the electronics it buys.

"Who has it? Where is it located?" he said. "Those kind of things, so you can account for them."

When the city buys a computer, all of that information is supposed to be entered into a city inventory system by the IT department. But that' hasn't been happening.

Thousands of computers, laptops, and other hardware weren't correctly entered into the system, and some weren't entered at all. In some cases, since there is no trail to find the items, the city doesn't know where they are.

Oseguera says there are nearly 500 electronic purchases unaccounted for. The value of those purchases isn't known, but could be mean anywhere from tens to hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars unaccounted for.

We spoke to the head of Sacramento's IT department, Maria MacGunigal, about the issue.

"Absolutely, we take this as a very serious mission of ours, and we are very engaged in making sure that all of the systems are properly inventoried and managed throughout their entire life cycle," she said.

She's looking into developing a policy for all staff to follow when it comes to entering and tracking purchases in the system.

 

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