Back to the senate hearings…The second witness at today’s public hearing, Francisco Gonzalez, was a busy man for most of 2013 and early in 2014. He was point man for the Audit team investigating the Immigration Department for their special audit and had been working with them around the clock as a database administrator with special responsibility for the Tax Administration System. But a major gripe of the team that made it into the Audit Report was that Gonzalez was yanked from the team at a critical time and forced by his boss, Michelle Longsworth, to limit his activity to evening times. The now-Acting Director of the Central Information Technology Office (CITO) recalled for the Senators that an administrative conflict led to the change.
Francisco Gonzalez
Francisco Gonzalez, Former Database Administrator, CITO
“I was there pretty much every day from November twenty-second up until the Audit team broke for Christmas break; and that was from nine a.m. all the way through to five, six p.m., depending on what time they decided to leave.”
Aldo Salazar, Chair, Senate Special Select Committee
“This was …?”
Francisco Gonzalez
“2013. And in 2014 when I returned from the Christmas break, I was there from January up until February the same, then at some point it was requested that I come in the evenings, because I was falling behind [with] some of my work at CITO, because I was not there for the past two months. And I was also assigned to work with the Belize Electronic License and Permit System, that began with the Taiwanese ICT cooperation agreement; I was also assigned to perform my daily functions with SIG TAS, and I was also responsible for the development of an application for the Solicitor General. So I had three things going on at CITO while at the same time I was trying to do work with the Auditor General. So at tht time I was asked to go in the evenings and I was told I could claim overtime, although I don’t recall specifically claiming any O.T., but after that, sometime around March or maybe it was before that – it is in an email in here; there was some communication between Mrs. [Michelle] Longsworth and the Auditor General whereby it was agreed that Mrs. Longsworth would be given a day’s notice before I were to attend – if they needed me, they would give Mrs. Longsworth a day’s notice. Now I recall going to work with them after it was agreed upon, and I do recall there being some disgruntled members from the Audit team that the Auditor General had to request that one day, and that she should be able to pull me whenever she should want, using the full force of the F.A.R.A. But I’m not sure; that’s above my pay grade.”