Interior logs off

Americans trying to access the National Park Service’s Web page during the last month to, as many try to do this time of year, reserve a campsite for next summer, have gotten an error message instead. Most Americans no doubt have written this inconvenience off as a glitch, that common annoyance of the Internet Age.

The sad truth is that the problem afflicting NPS Online, as well as nearly every other Web site of Department of the Interior bureaus, is not technological in origin, but human. The cause is not bugs, but pique.

Federal Judge Royce C. Lambeth ordered the Interior Web sites shut down a month ago after a computer security test concluded that the accounts in the Bureau of Indian Affairs trust fund program were vulnerable to manipulation by hackers. Actually, Judge Lambeth merely ordered Interior to disconnect from the Internet only those systems that provide access to individual trust fund data; Interior made the decision to pull the plug on everything. Businesses and organizations of all sizes and types that use the Web find it quite easy to prohibit outside access to confidential information, such as personnel files and financial records. It takes an agency of government to turn a relatively simple task into a crisis – not only is the public shut off from information and services to which it is entitled, Interior employees cannot use e-mail and payroll for the entire department is being done by hand.

This return to the Stone Age is the culmination of 150 years of Interior mucking up these trust accounts. There are some 300,000 of them, many created back in the 19th century as compensation for government taking of land, as payments for leases, as royalties for gas, oil and mineral rights. The total value is more than $3 billion, but for individual Indians, many desperately poor, the annual payments of a few hundred or a few thousand dollars are crucial. It’s not welfare, it’s not a handout; it’s debt bound by contract that must be paid.

It cannot, however, be paid properly because the BIA lost track of the accounts; many have never been reconciled or audited, some payments are made by guesswork, many legitimate claims are denied. After more than two decade of seeking remedy though cooperation, five Western tribes prevailed in a lawsuit against Interior two years ago in which it was determined that BIA cannot account for roughly a half-billion dollars.

The remedy was supposed to be the cleaning up, once and for all, of these accounts. This task, begun under the Clinton administration, now appears to be little more than the appearance of activity. The new computer system that was supposed to be the centerpiece of the project has been revealed a sham, so mistake-prone and lacking in the fundamentals of security that Judge Lambeth’s testers found it possibly beyond saving.

There is one more downside to this computer problem beyond those posed to campers and Interior’s payroll department – more than 40,000 Native Americans who should have gotten checks during the last month have not. The culture of condescension with which Interior has long treated Indians has been revealed in all its glory by this unnecessary and spiteful act.