The controversial five-year tenure of Dianah Neff, Philadelphia’s former chief information officer, culminated this past August in negative publicity for the official known in information technology circles as the architect of Mayor John Street’s Wireless Philadelphia project. Civitium, a company that worked on the city’s Wi-Fi initiative, announced that the former CIO was coming onboard as a senior partner. Neff had overseen the IT consulting firm’s work on the project. Neff’s critics howled, saying the move was a conflict of interest and a violation of ethics.
Neff’s apparent impropriety is remarkable only because it is the most recent case to draw the public’s ire. The Wireless Philadelphia project is an ambitious plan to provide wireless Internet service to the entire city. Neff’s high-profile position was matched by an annual salary of more than $194,000, which made her the highest-paid member of the mayor’s inner circle.
Neff had become well-known for racking up frequent flyer miles, traveling to at least 56 technology conferences, some abroad, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. The newspaper reported that some of those trips were paid for by a for-profit organization that receives funds from wireless companies, including Earthlink, “the Atlanta company selected last year to build Philadelphia’s wireless network. None of the free travel was disclosed on Neff’s annual ethics statements.”
City officials deemed the free trips to be gifts to the city, not Neff, and did not require her to disclose them. In September, Philadelphia’s board of ethics determined that Civitium did not violate city or state conflict-of-interest rules by hiring Neff, even though the former CIO had awarded the firm three contracts worth $453,000. Neff had also praised Civitium in remarks that she provided to the company for its marketing materials, and she participated in a podcast for Civitium while she was negotiating terms of her employment with the company, the city’s ethics review board reported.
The board concluded that Neff did not break any rules or laws, but it nonetheless scolded the former CIO for those activities related to Civitium.
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