16 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • APRIL 2019
POINT OF VIEW
FIXING ETHICS WORST TO FIRST
By LAURA CURRAN
Nassau County Executive
Last week was another milestone in
my administration’s mission to root
out corruption and promote transparency
in county government.
I took office promising to restore
trust in a county plagued by a culture
of corruption, largely due to lack of
transparency in our contracting
process. Now, Nassau County is
bringing 21st century solutions to
age-old problems.
I established a zero-tolerance policy for
county employees involved in procurement
or contracting. We revised county
ethics policies stating that procurement
professionals are responsible for conducting
themselves with integrity and
reporting observed acts of criminality,
waste, fraud, or abuse. We worked to
develop an online workflow allowing
vendors to submit claims online.
Last week, we took another step to
help turn Nassau from worst to first
when it comes to procurement ethics.
We announced a first-of-its-kind partnership
with Exiger, a leader in risk
and compliance solutions, ensuring
that the county spends every contract
dollar wisely. At no cost to taxpayers,
this will give Nassau access to
Exiger’s cutting-edge Insight 3PM
platform, to streamline research on
current and potential vendors.
Nassau is the first municipality in the
nation to use this third-party monitoring
technology to vet vendors. This
technology has been widely used in the
private sector to ensure compliance.
Before I was elected, research on Nassau’s
vendors was limited to manual
searches of open-source records —
basically a Google search.
Now we will leverage artificial intelligence
to search for publicly accessible
information that could pose problems
for county, including potential ethical
conflicts or undisclosed investigations
of vendors.
The platform will generate customized
reports based on our specific
needs and will give my compliance
team access to information from global
databases including Bloomberg,
LexisNexis, and World Compliance.
We’re only getting started. My compliance
team is moving full steam
ahead on my anti-corruption agenda,
entailing additional reforms to
bring more transparency into how
we spend taxpayer money.
"My compliance team is moving full steam."
SERVING LONG ISLAND
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