It’s now up to the court to decide how much information ASG, specifically the Office of Procurement, can release to the Senate Select Investigative Committee (SSIC) concerning the TalofaPass contract.
Attorney General (AG) Fainuulelei Alailima Utu filed on behalf of the Office of Procurement, a motion to quash in part and to comply in part with the SSIC subpoena of October 3 which asked for all documents, regarding the Talofa Pass, to include the contract of ASG and the Talofa Pass Software ad status of Talofa Pass data management.
In a November 21 filing, the AG cites that the subpoena is “overly broad, and fails to specifically describe documents other than the contract of ASG and Talofa Pass.” He also argues that the SSIC subpoena was not served with a copy of the rules, which he says is a violation of territorial statute requiring legislative committees to adopt rules to govern their procedures and to serve the subpoena with a copy of the rules to the party being served.
The AG is asking the court to quash all documents protected by a privilege.
He cites “Corporate Privilege” under which there’s duty to preserve the proprietary information of companies that submitted bids to cover trade secrets, privileged information and confidential, commercial, financial, proprietary information and data.
In addition “Government Privilege,” where the government has an obligation to preserve and protect the documentation of internal cost related data from bidders on government contract.
AG Alailima Utu proposes that the testimony of CPO Tialemasunu, Dr. Mikaele Etuale, shall be limited to public information and no testimony will be made on documents or information that are subject to or protected by corporate and government privilege, concerning the Office of Procurement Request for Proposals for the American Samoa Government Safe Travel System and the award of the TalofaPass Software to DataHouse Inc—the company that was selected to design the TalofaPass portal. The portal was used to register and pre-approve travelers to American Samoa during the COVID pandemic.
CPO Tialemasunu has already provided to the SSIC a list of bidders, the Office of Procurement Request for Proposals and other non-privilege communications relating to the contract involving TalofaPass.
