Densho Digital Repository - Robert "Bob" Bratt Interview (Densho ID: ddr-densho-1020-6-6)

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EK: So given that the impetus was on the department to go out and locate these people, how did that help you determine the best way to structure or organize the office and the processes that were going to be needed to do this?

BB: Well, the number one thing, and this goes back to... the most critical thing was, first of all, the number one thing I remember looking at was the integrity of the payment itself. That was my biggest concern right up front. ORA never made the news like some other federal programs in a negative way. But it was early on, the focus on making sure that we were giving checks out to who that person was. And so we constantly had discussions, from day one on checks and balances in the system to make sure that the person was, say that they were interned, who they were, and that we're paying the right person. That was, by far, the number one issue. Because if you think about it, if that had gone sideways, the rest of it really doesn't matter. And I started to allude to this earlier, the number one thing that guided me was -- and I can't remember exactly what they did -- it was some housing... HUD had a scandal at the time. It was just before, and I'm going to say it was '86 or '87 there were congressional hearings and I can remember a woman with blond hair, and I can't remember her name. But at the time, there were a couple faces of this HUD scandal, and I kept thinking to myself, oh boy, I don't want to be the face of the DOJ scandal. So that was where I spent, in setting up the office, my biggest focus. There was, outside of that, the second big area which really was the secondary phase of it was, you're going to need a whole ton of people to look at different things, to verify different things, you're going to need a whole operation underneath you. So then how, given that government's not a role model for quickly hiring people, and how you did this, how are you going to make that happen very quickly? And luckily, we had a terrific commercial litigation support partner that was in the Civil Rights Division, and we got them -- I don't think they're in business anymore, Aspen Systems, I think they were bought out by Lockheed, if I'm not mistaken, ten or fifteen years ago. But Aspen Systems and the partnership with them was fantastic. Knew some of the senior people over there, one of my friends actually worked over there, didn't hire them, because one of my friends was there, make sure everyone understands. But just that they were already in a competed contract at the Department of Justice, they were available to us, they had already competed in an IDIQ contract there, and so we could quickly just sign them on. There were negotiated rates, et cetera. And the great news there is that we could have two people on Monday, or we could have ten people on Monday, if we needed them. So that flexibility was critical to us, especially early on in what we were doing there.

But then again, going back to... and the other thing was, before we get back to, the other thing was, every chance the way, which nobody ever saw, this was invisible to everybody from the outside was, I utilized my staff that was in the Civil Rights Division left and right. So the finance guy, our finance guy also doubled as my budget manager for ORA. So everybody was two- hatting the whole time, and that was the beauty of, that was never really seen by anybody was, I had a hundred professionals working for me that could help out at any given time and they did.

So a focus on the integrity of the program, a way to staff it quickly, really came to light. And especially in the early part, until you had full-time permanent people in there, because there were zero when we started, was everyone got to work a little extra.