Crap and Paid
By Amit Singh | Sunday, June 21st, 2009 | Policy, PoliticsVirginia taxpayers have paid Northrup Grumman and Motorola billions of dollars for a medical database that was recently hacked into and a non-existent communication system for our police officers. In addition to the low-quality and lack of delivery, the contracts are millions of dollars over-budget. Jeff Schapiro of the Times Dispatch correctly points out that McDonnell should make an issue of this black-eye for the Warner-Kaine legacy that Deeds is running on. Holding contractors accountable for how taxpayer money is wasted is the job of our governor.
Tags:
Contribute for Conservatism!
Share this post
About the author
Amit Singh
I'm left handed but right brained.
We're 75% there! Thank you to everyone who has so far contributed! Just $2000 to go!
Comments
9 Responses to "Crap and Paid"
http://www.vpap.org/donors/profile/index/137140?end_year=2009&filter_cmte=all&filter_cmte_radio=all&lookup_type=year&order=amount&page=1&start_year=1996
good point Darrell. I never said these contractors were stupid
I was wondering when the blogosphere was going to come around on this VITA/NG thing. Agencies, rightly so, are up in arms over this partnership, and NG has not held its end of the contractual bargain on numerous benchmarks. I think there’s a lot of stuff beneath the surface that would not look good for the mythical “Warner-Kaine” legacy. (Unfortunately, JLARC’s final report on VITA/NG won’t be out until December).
Furthermore, I think this Warner-Kaine legacy thing is easily exposed…the largest tax increase in Va. history, coupled with deep budget short falls. Plus, if you look into the recent revenue reports put out the Sec. of Finance, there are huge structural problems with the budget going forward. To put it bluntly, the Warner-Kaine legacy of rosy revenue projections to spur drastic spending increases has created a difficult budgeting process where we are going to be scrounging for funds to support basic programmatic increases (namely rebenchmarking the SOQs and Medicaid).
There is a huge opening here, and I hope McDonnell drives a truck through it and hammers these points home.
I haven’t read anything new about this VITA process. The Navy ran into the same sort of problems with NMCI.
It’s relatively easy to build the network infrastructure. That’s a straight forward engineering problem with known variables. The problems arise when you begin to address the software side of the house. A lack of past agency wide development standards, combined with ancient applications that aren’t readily upgradable, create a night mare living up to service level agreements and proposed planning objectives. When you add in turf protection by government employees that may soon lose their jobs, it’s no wonder that a political firestorm ensues.
It’s been nearly ten years, and NMCI is still dealing with these issues. Don’t expect NG to waive a magic wand and make the state’s problems disappear. The real issue with these type of large scale projects is it becomes more expensive to change horses than to continue with the one you have. It’s a one shot deal that doesn’t lend itself to going back to the old system.
granted the problems VITA may not all be NG’s fault as I know first hand the govt customer is often more to blame for the failures than the contractor. Whoever the culprit, the governor should hold the leadership accountable whether they are state employees or contractors.
Darrell,
Just a couple of points related to the VITA thing. Your points are generally on the money. The state needed to engage in a major enterprise architecture upgrade, and this hasn’t happened. The accounting system all agencies use for central reporting is about 25 years old, for example. The IT operations of the state prior to VITA were scattered and not easily consolidated. Clearly, the VITA/NG partnership could have been a step in the direction of consolidation, but the state is 3 years in to the partnership, and the milestones are not being met. Couple that with skyrocketing IT costs for most agencies (particularly the large ones), and it’s a mess right now.
As for the government employees themselves, the transfer of IT staff formerly employed by a respective agency to the central state agency (VITA) has already occurred, so the downsizing of the IT force has already occurred. The major complaints from government employees are that the level of IT service previously enjoyed at the agency-level has gone down while their IT-related costs have gone up.
You’re right that there is no easy solution, but it looks like we’re stuck with a $2.3 billion mistake.
The problem you have is VITA would have never became an entity without the Republicans. It may have been Warner’s idea, but the enabling legislation was sponsored by Republicans and approved by them, including McD. The GOP were big on public private partnerships and their bills authorized the exact arrangement that now exists with NG. They can go to the people and claim the whole thing was a bad idea, at their own peril. That’s why I think there will be window dressing hearings and then the entire issue will be tossed back into the closet. Neither party can afford to make this an election year issue.
Interesting. There was some controversy in Loudoun County last year when the Sheriff’s Office rammed through a last minute sole source contract to Motorola when some other companies said they could do it for much less. This deserves more scrutiny.
Darrell, you’re right…there are a lot of hands in this cookie jar, and the taxpayers are left with the mess left behind.
Leave your response