From a May 7 City of Atlanta press release: Mayor Kasim Reed on Tuesday appointed Michael T. Sterling as interim executive director of AWDA, the city's workforce development agency. Sterling served as Mayor Reed's senior advisor and previously served as a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in Chicago, Illinois. The appointment was made shortly after former executive director, Deborah Lum, announced her retirement.
“Michael Sterling is an exceptional leader and tremendous asset to our Administration,” said Mayor Kasim Reed. “I am confident that Michael will ensure that the important work of this vital agency is continued and will lead the agency on a path that restores confidence, transparency and fiscal responsibility to the organization.”
From a Jan. 2013 letter by Atlanta's auditor to the mayor and City Council: AWDA provided services to 25,310 clients from July 1, 2010, through May 15, 2012. Most of these clients lived outside of the city limits. AWDA has no systematic information on performance outcomes for the majority of clients entered into its client tracking database and registers only a small percentage of its clients into the state system that allows the state to monitor employment outcomes. Neither AWDA nor the state's system ties clients to expenses or enables AWDA to reliably track employers. Also, AWDA's system stores unencrypted personally identifiable information, such as social security numbers and birth dates, which poses significant risk.
We provided a copy of the report draft to the chief operating officer, the AWDA executive director, and the chief information officer in October 2012 for review and comment. Our recommendations to the chief operating officer focus on assessing whether it is feasible to continue the AWDA, and if so, suggest increasing oversight of the agency and assisting it in devising ways to collect and report complete, accurate, reliable, and timely information. We also recommend that the chief information officer ensure that personally identifiable information maintained in AWDA information systems is protected, if the agency is to continue.
