A Department of Veterans Affairs watchdog has dismissed three misconduct allegations against a top federal IT official brought by the agency’s former chief information security officer.
According to two copies of a January report obtained exclusively by FedScoop, the VA’s Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection (OAWP) did not substantiate three complaints filed against Joseph Stenaka in October 2020 by Paul Cunningham.
Stenaka at the time of the complaint was executive director for information security operations within the department’s Office of Information and Technology (OIT), and in that role he reported directly to Cunningham. Both Cunningham and Stenaka have since departed from their roles at the VA.
The three complaints submitted against Stenaka were: that he failed to follow supervisory instructions when he attended a Sept. 4, 2020, meeting with Susan Perez, OIT chief of staff; that he demonstrated lack of candor in response to questions from his supervisor about his attendance at a Sept. 4, 2020, meeting; and that Stenaka made disrespectful statements about OIT senior leaders in a Sept 4, 2020, meeting.
The allegations filed against Stenaka came just a month after the IT official submitted a protected whistleblower complaint in which he raised concerns about negotiations between Cunningham and software company Splunk over a cloud computing contract.
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