Accenture Federal Services

Garrett Bernson, last seen on China Talk in his role as deputy CDAO at the State Department.

He went to the then Department of Defense for a little bit, now makes a triumphant return in his new role as chief AI officer at Accenture Federal Services.

We're going to talk what the national security community needs besides just API access to wonderful models in order to really change how it does its mission.

Garrett, welcome back.

And they used race and sex as hiring and promotional tools while at the same time, while they were being investigated, they told the feds that's not at all what they did.

Accenture Federal Services, Accenture PLC, Accenture LLP, all of them part of the same group of companies.

They agreed to this payment so that they could resolve the alleged False Claims Act violations.

And federal contracts require contractors to certify that they will not discriminate based on race, based on sex.

They will treat all applicants and employees without regard to those immutable categories.

The DOJ alleged that Accenture Federal Services made that certification since 2017, while at the same time chasing internal workforce targets for DEI.

Managers would receive monthly scorecards.

Race and sex percentages were marked in green, yellow, or red against goals that were not published publicly.