Employee Background Investigation Services – Washington, D.C.

Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Proposals are solicited for RFP CQ6083/DYB for Background Investigation Services. Eligible firms must able to receive and transmit background check information to WMATA’s Hiring, Employment Application, and Requisition Tracking System (HEARTS) which is PeopleSoft’s eRecruit module (ver. 8.8).

The scope of services shall include pre-employment background checks as well as background checks for existing employees on an as-needed basis involving a verification of job application information, obtaining performance-related information from at least two previous supervisors/employers and obtaining County, State and/or National criminal conviction records. Permission shall be obtained from job applicants by WMATA prior to the background checks being initiated.

The scheduled due date for this bid is April 18, 2007

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Thirteen nursing homes run by one of the largest elder care providers in the country are accused of abuse in a class-action lawsuit filed in Orange County Superior Court.

The lawsuit accuses Southern California care centers operated by Life Care Centers of America Inc. of having a long history of substandard care. The complaint was filed Thursday by attorney Stephen Garcia on behalf of thousands of California residents who lived in one of the centers.

A nurse who allegedly let her 78-year-old husband lay on a floor soiled with animal urine and feces for more than four hours has been charged in Dodge County Circuit Court.

Sandra Morris, 55, of Neosho, made her initial appearance earlier this week and was charged with misdemeanor negligent maltreatment of vulnerable adults. If convicted, Morris faces up to nine months imprisonment and a $10,000 fine.

Morris is also charged with obtaining prescription drugs through fraud and misdemeanor theft in an unrelated incident in which she allegedly stole medication from her former employer, Mayville Nursing and Rehabilitation.

This past weekend, we passed a milestone — 100 days since the enacting of the new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as they relate to eDiscovery. In summary, those Rules attempt to give courts guidance for how to treat digital data and information, in whatever form and context it is in.

The Rules try to contain the ever escalating costs that plaintiffs and defendants. So spreadsheets, letters, contracts, e-mails and all of those files that are stored on disk and on tape, on and off the network can, should, and must be “discoverable” to all of the parties engaged in litigation.

So, after 100 days, how are the Rules standing up.

That’s what we’ll be talking about here.

After headlining two failed comedies, Andy Richter allows himself to dream . . . moderately.

Conan O’Brien’s former sidekick enters the TV series fray again as an accountant who accidentally becomes a private investigator in the new NBC comedy “Andy Barker, P.I.” (premiering Thursday night at 9:30 on WHDH, Ch. 7).

“It doesn’t need to be the new ’Heroes’ or the new sensation,” Richter said in a recent conference call with reporters. “I would like a sort of medium success that chugs along for four or five years that makes people happy and makes us comfortable. As somebody that’s in the comedy business looking at the big runaway success comedies, there are so many whose success I applaud and so many whose success I’m absolutely baffled by and think, ’This is what people want?’ To hope for runaway success is sort of like hoping to be hit by lightning because it will either kill you or make you a superhero. You don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s just too kind of volatile and weird.”

Foster children need all the protection authorities can provide them, considering the serious problems that have come to light in Ohio in recent months.

Now, as Hamilton County foster agency officials have learned, it’s not enough to only conduct initial background checks on foster parents. These days, ongoing checks are necessary, and if parents refuse to consent to the checks, the children should be removed from the home.

The Hamilton County agency, which includes Cincinnati, has come under scrutiny because it didn’t know about six of 27 arrests uncovered in background checks. The reason for the failure: the agency only looked for convictions, not arrests. The six cases did not result in convictions. Hamilton County court officials discovered the arrests as they were setting up a system to provide immediate notification when arrests do occur.

A new law will go into effect April 1 that requires all prospective school district employees across the state to undergo a federal criminal history check.

This legislation will toughen an existing law that only requires a local background check unless an employee has resided outside of Pennsylvania for at least two years prior to employment.

The new law could prove difficult to maintain, according to one local school district official.

“It’s a nice thing to do, something to ensure the safety of our students,” said Bill Hodge, human resources director at Chambersburg Area School District. “(Student safety) is always our first priority, but (the new law) is going to be painful.”

A new type of network architecture – Wireless Optical Mesh – makes video surveillance viable in outdoor environments.

In post-9/11 America, we’ve become more comfortable smiling for the cameras in airports, parking garages, lobbies, schools – anywhere that security threats might arise. And now the owners of these facilities are making massive investments in state-of-the-art security technologies, to the tune of $6 billion in 2006 alone, according to strategic consulting firm A4 International.

The ideal security system, according to both security and technology experts, is a single, powerful network infrastructure that maintains live video surveillance centrally, along with other sophisticated applications. With centralized video surveillance, security personnel can monitor video streams from many dispersed cameras in real time. Even more important, video-analytics software can rapidly evaluate threats that appear in any of the video streams and even respond to them automatically.

The file is gone. It’s not in the recycle bin. You’ve done a complete search of your files for it, and now the panic sets in. It’s vanished. You may have even asked people to look through their e-mail because maybe you sent it to them (you didn’t). Oops. Now what?

Hours, days, maybe even years, of hard work seem to be lost. Wait! Don’t touch that PC! Every action you take on your PC at this point may be destroying what is left of your file. It’s not too late yet. You’ve possibly heard that things that are deleted are never really deleted, but you may also think that it will cost you thousands of dollars to recover deleted files once you’ve emptied the recycle bin. Suffice it to say, unless you are embroiled in complicated e-Discovery or forensic legal proceedings where preservation is a requirement, recovering some deleted files for you may cost no more than a tune-up for your car.

It’s not just paranoia. You are being watched. The period following Sept. 11, 2001, has been a technological Renaissance Era for agencies and companies that monitor, track and record the activities of everyday people.

By comparison, the legal system charged with regulating these new surveillance systems is still in the Dark Ages, critics say, with technology outpacing lawmakers every step of the way.

Low-cost digital video cameras, Internet monitoring software and myriad consumer tracking systems that convert behavior into data have raised new questions about how far a society should be allowed to go in scrutinizing its members.

In short, when innocuous surveillance becomes ubiquitous, does that make it insidious?

• Group for Private Investigators
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