Brendan J. Lyons
June 10, 2026
ALBANY — A former high-ranking official in the state Office of Information Technology Services has admitted violating Public Officers Law and will pay a $5,500 fine to settle administrative charges that had been pursued by the Commission on Ethics in Lobbying in Government and the state inspector general’s office.
The settlement was reached with Rajiv Rao, a former chief technology officer who abruptly resigned in 2023 as state officials were reviewing his handling of government contracts with former acting state Budget Director Sandra L. Beattie.
The allegations stemmed from Rao’s attendance as a guest and a speaker at multiple events that state authorities said were “hosted and paid for by a registered lobbyist and attended by clients of the lobbyist.”
“He did so without obtaining approval from or informing ITS,” the agencies said in a joint statement Wednesday announcing the settlement. “At the time of at least one of the events, the lobbyist was actively and directly lobbying ITS for a client. Further, shortly after that event, another client hired the lobbyist to lobby ITS and other state entities on procurements relating to telecommunications and network solutions. Soon thereafter, Rao worked with ITS to authorize a procurement from that client.”
The investigation determined that Rao also did not inform his office of the potential conflict of interest “when his son became employed by a global professional services firm that had retained the lobbyist and which did business with New York state, including a project in which ITS was heavily involved.”
Rao also was found to have violated his office’s policy by procuring mobile devices for himself and another high-ranking state official without registering the devices on a mobile device security platform as required.
“We’re grateful to the Office of the Inspector General for its collaboration in pursuing this matter and in helping to deliver the increased transparency in government that New Yorkers deserve,” said Sanford N. Berland, executive director of the state ethics commission.
Ethics commission Chairman Seymour W. James, Jr., said that state officials “have a duty to be aware of and follow New York’s ethics laws.” He added that the investigation with the inspector general’s office “uncovered facts showing that Mr. Rao knowingly shirked that duty, making this settlement an appropriate conclusion to the allegations against Mr. Rao.”
The Times Union reported in 2023 that Rao, who was then also a deputy chief information officer for technology at the Office of Information Technology Services, resigned that March, several weeks after he had taken a voluntary leave of absence — a day after Beattie was forced from her position.
In response to questions from the newspaper that year about whether Gov. Kathy Hochul had any concerns regarding the work of Beattie or Rao, who had a close working relationship and partnered on major projects, a spokeswoman for the governor said at the time they had referred the matter to the state inspector general’s office.
No allegations of misconduct have been made against Beattie.
Beattie’s tenure ended less than a week after Hochul’s office announced that Robert L. Megna, who had been the state budget director for governors David A. Paterson and Andrew M. Cuomo, would return to that role.
The budget director oversees the state’s fiscal policies, executes annual state budgets and also manages New York’s debt portfolio.
People who work for companies that do business with the state had privately raised concerns about the number of multimillion-dollar contracts that New York has awarded to Deloitte Consulting, a company where Beattie had worked for a period of roughly two years more than a decade ago. There also have been internal questions about the number and type of consulting contracts awarded during the coronavirus pandemic.
The state had initially contracted with IBM to develop the Excelsior Pass, a digital vaccination credentialing app, but Beattie in 2021 intervened and pushed for Deloitte to become the system integrator, according to a person familiar with the matter. Rao worked with Beattie on that project.
“The state’s Division of the Budget… which advises the governor on matters that affect the financial health of the state, collaborated with the Office of Information Technology Services… to explore how digital technologies could help accelerate reopening the economy without compromising public health,” Deloitte says in a posting on its website several years ago. “Sandra Beattie, the state’s first deputy budget director, and Rajiv Rao, the New York ITS chief technology officer and executive deputy chief information officer, worked quickly to marshal resources and tap into expertise from internal agencies such as the U.S. Department of Health.”
That project was not publicly bid — at a time when many projects were being fast-tracked and allowed to bypass normal procurement procedures.
Rao had been a top figure in the state’s major technology initiatives for about a decade and in 2022 was named one of the nation’s “Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers” by Government Technology magazine. In 2012, Rao was named chief architect for the design and creation of the state’s data center, a process which state officials said involved more than 50 agencies and 20,000 computer servers.
Beattie had been budget director for only a few months after Robert Mujica, who was appointed to the position in 2015 by Cuomo, announced he was leaving to become head of Puerto Rico’s Financial Management and Oversight Board.
“At a time when public confidence in government is at historic lows, it is vital that oversight agencies conduct independent investigations, ensure accountability, and report findings publicly,” state Inspector General Lucy Lang said.
