Baltimore County's use of the PRiSM software system has come under scrutiny after a series of reports by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) highlighted an alleged waste of taxpayer money exceeding $737,000. The software, which was supposed to enable the Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) unit to efficiently monitor contract compliance to ensure the hiring of minority businesses, was reportedly plagued with technical issues that rendered it ineffective for years. According to a recent report, divulged by the OIG, these technical shortcomings prohibited the county from confirming if it was hitting its minority hiring targets.
Released today, the OIG report, led by Inspector General Kelly Madigan, found that from 2008 to 2025, Baltimore County had spent a considerable sum on the PRiSM software, but due to compatibility issues, notably with the county-wide system Workday, the intended use was never actualized. Without the proper enforcement of compliance, contracts worth almost half had no related documentation, "meaning that no compliance had been performed" by the MBE on those contracts, as detailed in the report seen by WMAR-2 News. These findings are the culmination of a string of investigations by Madigan, who began digging into the MBE's operations in 2023 and is now on the verge of departing for a new post in Howard County.
In an effort to address these findings, County Administrative Officer D'Andrea Walker stated that their purchasing division has issued eight cure letters and two penalty letters to enforce minority and women-owned business enterprise commitments, resulting in fines amounting to over $300,000. Walker has also indicated that the county is working to fully integrate the software system, acknowledging a recent shift of the MBE back under the jurisdiction of the Office of Budget and Finance from the Office of Human Resources' Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Division, as she disclosed in a response featured in a report by WYPR.
