Recently in Information Technology Category

 Source: By DIANE S. WILLIAMS, Public Employee Press (NY), February 2010

 

DC 37 leaders blasted a 1,000 percent cost overrun on a computer contract -- still unfinished after 12 years -- that the city gave to former Giuliani officials with ties to the Bloomberg administration.

They testified Dec. 18 before the City Council Contracts Committee, which is investigating how the $63 million Citytime deal ballooned to $700 million as the city budget went into the red and the mayor laid off employees.

By Jonathan Walters, Governing.com December 8, 2009
 

Well it's happened again--another spectacular crash and burn of an information-technology system that was supposed to be the magical answer to a state human services system's performance and cost woes. This time it is Indiana's 10-year $1.16 billion deal with IBM to pre- and re-qualify clients for health and human services ranging from TANF to Medicaid to food stamps. Two and half years into the deal, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels flipped off the switch, cancelling the contract and sending IBM packing.

....... As the story is told in the general media, it's the classic and predictable bad-guys-in-action story line: Governor Mitch Daniels, conservative Republican, looking to do a little union-busting, decides to turn over a significant portion of the work done by the state's Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA) to IBM. As part of the deal, hundreds of former public employees are summarily shifted over to IBM, where they serve as at-will employees, outside of the state's public employee collective bargaining system.

Source: By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER, New York Times, December 7, 2009

 

...... There have been other scuffles over who has the right to data. Routesy, an iPhone application, uses data from San Francisco's Municipal Transportation Agency to show train and bus schedules and locate stations on a map. It stopped working for a while because a private contractor working with the agency wanted to charge a licensing fee for the information. The agency now requires its contractor, NextBus, to make the data freely available.

Source: AMERICAN-STATESMAN (TX), Monday, November 09, 2009

 

Here's a Monday morning reminder on a lesson we seem to need to periodically relearn: Privatization of traditionally governmental functions can be a good thing, or not.  Two recent examples from that latter category remind us that governments at all levels must move carefully and precisely when farming out functions to profiteers promising to save some tax dollars. .... Texas is blessed with many fine state employees, often willing to go above and beyond the call of duty, who do their jobs and deliver services even when the politicians and higher-ups screw things up.

Source: Ellen Dannin, Pennsylvania State University - Dickinson School of Law, April 2, 2003

 

.... Despite what we have learned recently about how critical information technology is, how easily it can be misused - and how expensive that misuse can be - both federal and state governments are pursuing a course of privatizing information that seems to know no bounds. Private companies now have contracts to provide a wide range of services that involve generating and collecting highly personal information, including social and mental health services; education, medication and psychiatric services; unemployment benefits processing; accounting and information technology; legal services; permit application, payment of taxes or fines, and car registration.

 

 ........ This transfer of important functions from public to private control should be at the center of national debate. It affects our national security, our personal security, and our finances. Yet there has been deafening silence - except for those who cheerlead every movement from public to private control. The time has come for national debate on this issue.

Source: Bill Turque, Washington Post, (DC), Tuesday, September 29, 2009

The District has fired the contractor hired to build a $12 million data repository for critical information about D.C. schools, citing missed deadlines, software defects and failure to make available the personnel it promised, officials said Monday.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) and State Superintendent of Education Kerri L. Briggs announced the dismissal of Williams, Adley & Co. , an accounting and management consulting firm, at a late afternoon news conference. The firm was awarded a contract early last year to create the Statewide Longitudinal Data Warehouse, which was to compile information about student academic growth, teacher quality and graduation rates and make it available to policymakers and parents.

Source: By DAVID JOLLY and STEVE LOHR, New York Times, September 29, 2009

 

Xerox, the global copier and imaging giant, will pay $6.4 billion to acquire the outsourcing company Affiliated Computer Services, expanding its foothold in a growing industry, the companies said Monday.

Xerox, based in Norwalk, Conn., is paying $63.11 a share in cash and stock for A.C.S., which posted revenue growth of 6 percent and new business signings of $1 billion in annual recurring revenue during its fiscal 2009.

Source: By Matt Rosenberg, Daily Progress (VA), September 26, 2009

Fallout from a controversial shift to a privately run computer network has some Virginia leaders rethinking their affinity for outsourcing.

But the state, if only for financial reasons, shows no sign of retreating from what some call "government by contract."

"This privatizing has got to stop," said Senate Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw of Fairfax County, a business-friendly Democrat. "That's become an excuse for not paying for services. . . . What are you going to do for your next act--sell the Capitol?"

 

Source: California State Auditor, September 2009

HIGHLIGHTS

Our review of the personal services and consulting contracts for information technology (IT contracts) used by the Department of Health Care Services and the Department of Public Health (departments) revealed the following:

• Over the last five years, the State Personnel Board (board) has disapproved 17 of 23 IT contracts challenged by a union.
• Many of the board's decisions were moot because the contracts had already expired before the board rendered its decisions.
• Of the six IT contracts still active at the time of the board's decisions, only three were terminated because of board disapprovals.
• Health Care Services did not comply with state policy regarding the use of blanket positions and was disingenuous with budgetary oversight entities.
• Neither Health Care Services nor Public Health has a complete database that allows it to identify active IT contracts and purchase orders.
• The departments complied with many, but not all, state procurement requirements.
• The departments did not obtain the requisite financial interest statements from half the sampled employees responsible for evaluating contract bids and offers.

RECOMMENDATIONS

To create more substantive results from the reviews conducted by the board under California Government Code, Section 19130(b), the Legislature should do the following:

• Specify that contracts disapproved by the board must be terminated and require state agencies to provide documentation to the board and the applicable unions to demonstrate to the satisfaction of the board the termination of these contracts.
• Prohibit state agencies from entering into subsequent contracts for substantially the same services as specified in contracts under board review without first notifying the board and the applicable unions, allow unions to add these contracts to the board's review of the original contracts, and allow the board to disapprove the subsequent contracts, if appropriate, as part of its decision on the original contracts.
• Require state agencies that have contracts disapproved by the board to obtain preapprovals from the board--in a manner similar to the process that occurs for requests under California Government Code, Section 19130(a)--before entering into contracts for substantially the same services. Further, if an agency enters into a contract without the board's preapproval, the Legislature should allow the applicable union to challenge this contract and prohibit the agency from arguing that the contract was justified under Section 19130(a) or (b). Instead, the board should resolve only whether the subsequent contract is for substantially the same service as the disapproved contract.

Source: By Jonathan Walters, Governing, May 1, 2009

..... The whole business of large-scale tech contracting is stunningly complicated, but some simple principles still drive the process. For vendors to pursue contracts, they have to be reasonably certain that they're not being set up for a frustrating tail chase, fiscal pain or outright failure. Yet states seem to be getting stingier about what they're willing to pay for these mega-projects. Texas went so far as to put a ceiling on what it would spend. No doubt, public-sector budgeters like the certainty that goes along with a fixed-price, multiple-year contract. But it also represents a fiscal straitjacket that makes some vendors nervous about getting involved.