Universally Wrong
Our Harris County DOGE investigation has found a third of Harris County government workers don’t have to report to the office full time… Now we show you how one 96 million dollar department needs to be reigned in. What we found is UNIVERSALLY WRONG.
Universal Services
“Inform the federal workforce that if they’re working for the federal government, they must show up to the office on time and on schedule,” said President Trump.
The president has done it.
“There’s a whole big ‘oh, you can work from home.’ Nobody’s going to work from home. They’re going to be going out. They’re going to play tennis. They’re going to play golf,” President Trump said.
So has the governor.
“And the governor ordered state workers to return to the office five days a week,” a news anchor said.
They’ve both told government workers to report to the office full time.
But in Harris County, the Democrats on Commissioners Court have refused to issue a similar order.
We made you a promise. We’re going to blow some efficiency back into Harris County government.
Only 45 people watched this riveting YouTube video since its debut a year and a half ago.
It’s the latest one the folks in the Harris County Universal Services Department ever did.
This woman is Sindhu Menon, the executive director of Harris County’s Universal Services Department.
“Innovation happens across the county in multiple departments,” Menon said.
They are the people who run technology for Harris County government, more and more trying to use AI.
They run the computers and the fleet of more than 5,000 cars.
Their budget is $96 million of your money.
“We are constantly looking at bringing efficiency to our internal processes,” said Menon.
Online, you can find not-so-high-tech videos from the tech folks, like the practices Universal Services holds for disasters.
“But now we know how to handle an all-hazards event when it shows up at 3 in the morning,” Greg Jurrens said.
I got an idea, make sure all your employees can quickly get downtown at 3 A.M. because you sure aren’t making sure they’re even coming to the office full time.
Documents we received under state law show there are 502 employees in Universal Services, only 227 are in the office full time.
That’s less than half.
“This is one of the top questions that get asked,” Menon explained.
Sindhu claims to be in office full time, but the county’s chief technology officer, her number two, shows an address in Irving, Texas.
He is paid $214,000 a year, the most of all those employees who don’t have to report to the office full-time.
“When we invest in extra dollars in a department, we know what we’re getting back or not,” Daniel Ramos said.
Okay. That’s scary.
Guess we should be thankful.
Daniel Ramos, the guy talking in this episode of County Tech Talk, Needs a lesson in efficiency.
Not a single employee was working full time in the Office of Management Budget until we asked, including Ramos, who makes $411,000 a year.
“And so it’s really about prioritizing and trying to make sure that, you know, we’re being data driven and that we’re following best practices,” Ramos explained.
We figured the technology department would have some high-tech website, but they might want to update a few things.
The annual report from Universal Services is four years old. There’s a message from the executive director, but that’s Richard Noriega, who was fired 22 months ago over a sexual harassment complaint.
He sued the county.
There’s a newsletter page that hasn’t been updated since July ’23.
Maybe the county’s Innovation Office can hit the refresh button.
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