Officials have canceled a three-year, $450,000 technology staffing contract after it was discovered the new company was owned by a current Oakland County employee.

County officials learned about the contract to Zaydlogix on July 3 and investigated that afternoon, said Bill Mullan, county spokesman. The company was hired to provide staffing for the county’s Courts and Law Enforcement Management Information Systems (CLEMIS).

The contract was canceled after the holiday weekend, he said, and added that no payments were made to the company.

County policy forbids employees from creating outside contracts with the county.

“The county recognizes that an oversight occurred during the contract review process,” Mullan said, adding that stronger safeguards have been added to the contract review process to avoid a repeat.

Mullan said he’s not aware of any criminal component to the awarding of this contract and that no one has been disciplined at this point.

The county’s information technology department has run CLEMIS but plans to create an independent authority after Oct. 1.

The Zaydlogix contract was part of the plan. County officials said canceling Zaydlogix’s contract won’t affect plans for the new authority, which is modeled after the state’s Law Enforcement Information Network (LEIN).’The five Zaydlogix employees who started working for the county in June will be paid directly as independent contractors, Mullan said. They’ll be offered positions with other staffing agencies that have current county IT contracts, he said.

The county’s IT department sent out a request for proposal in June 2024 using its own procurement template and awarded the contract to Zaydlogix in the fall of 2024, Mullan said, along with contracts for 130 other vendors.

In September, the county hired Aaron Wagner to be its new chief procurement officer. He created a new procurement template in November 2024 that requires bidders to disclose any conflicts of interest, including whether a company bidding has any connections to a county employee.

Zaydlogix is a Shelby Township-based tech staffing company founded in June 2024 by Shukur Mohammad, according to state records. Mohammad is an application architect in the county’s IT department, where he’s worked since 2016. Public records show he earned $157,076 in 2023. The Oakland Press has asked Mohammad to comment on the contract and will update the online story with his response.

Mohammad, Wagner and county’s chief information officer, Rod Davenport, signed the 40-page contract in June. The county’s conflict of interest policy is stated on page 19 of the contract.

Mohammad was in line to work for the new authority.

Mullan said all other IT contracts are now under review to ensure all comply with county policies.

More than 100 public agencies across multiple counties use the CLEMIS platform for court and jail records, among many other services. It also includes digital radio broadcasts, police reports, fingerprints and the technology that prints out a ticket when a driver gets pulled over for a traffic violation, Mullan said.

“The laptops you see in police cruisers use CLEMIS,” he said. “It’s the system that prints out your ticket if you get pulled over. Police cruisers use CLEMIS via laptops.”