By Jim Spencer
SpencerSpeaks.com

October 11, 2007

A sense of déjà vu hung heavily over Gov. Bill Ritter’s announcement of a new consolidated state information technology system.

Ritter bragged that the new system would eliminate dozens of IT “silos” and combine them into a single efficient comprehensive computing unit.

We have heard this sort of talk before, only to have practice betray theory.

Ritter’s promises of economies of scale and better customer service echo promises in Gov. Bill Owens’ administration with the introduction of the now notorious Colorado Benefits Management System.

You remember CBMS. It was that $98 million computer system developed by a company called EDS. It was going to streamline the welfare application and distribution process for the entire state.

Instead, CBMS eventually cost taxpayers over $200 million. For a long time the computer system tied social workers in knots and delayed legitimate benefits to some people while lavishing others with as much as $11 million in benefits they should not have received. It was such an early disaster that it got the state sued by clients and audited by the federal government.

CBMS was not the only recent state IT innovation to lock up like a mother board under a dose of hot coffee. There was Genesis, the supposed state-of-the-art unemployment benefits program at the Department of Labor and Employment. After dumping $35 million in that, Colorado dumped the developer, Accenture LLP. Accenture is the company that the Secretary of State fired for screwing up a computerized voter-registration system.

In April, the state had to halt introduction of a computer system for titling and registering cars in Colorado. The $13.2 million system occasionally gave wrong information to law enforcement who would impound properly registered and titled vehicles.

These foul-ups helped give birth to the state IT system Ritter unveiled Thursday.

“Over the next few years, we will consolidate 38 separate data centers,” the governor told a convention of Colorado software innovators. He promised a system so sophisticated that the blind would one day be able to apply for state jobs online.

Why this high tech effort will succeed where others failed boils down to a couple of things, said John D. Conley, the state’s deputy chief information officer.

“CBMS was futuristic at the time it was introduced,” Conley said. “We’re talking here about proven technology.”

That technology will be moved from a small scale to a large scale application, he said.

At the same time, Conley called CBMS “a great system” that links 64 counties and serves one in nine Coloradans.

“Were we over budget or under-funded?” Conley asked of the cost overruns and lousy kick-off at CBMS.

Whatever the answer is, it will not apply to the new consolidation, according to Conley.

“We’re going to ask for the budget that is needed to bring things together,” he said. “So often we ask for funds and get less. That thinking with IT doesn’t work. Before, people just took the money (and did the best they could). We will properly budget and ask for the money.”

If the General Assembly won’t approve enough to do the job right, Conley said, the office of technology information “will say, ‘Pass,’ until we have the means to do the job.”

The job, as Ritter described it Thursday, is to vault the state from the background to the forefront of information technology.

“We can vault into the nation’s technology elite,” the governor told the software developers. “And we’ll do it by using technology to save taxpayers millions of dollars and more effectively deliver services.”

While Colorado operates with a “fractured” system of 38 data centers that duplicate costs, the governor explained, some states have as few as two or three data centers.

The end game is better computer service at an affordable price, a goal which heretofore has not panned out.

Besides the blind applying for state jobs online, Conley talks of technology troubleshooting by a collective of computer jocks who never used to talk to one another because they were scattered among different agencies. Conley also talks of citizens able to merge the functions of the Departments of Revenue, Regulatory Agencies and Labor and Employment into a single online stop to, say, set up a business.

It all sounds so enticing.

Just like CBMS, Genesis and the voter and car registration systems.

Time will tell. It will take a couple of years to empty the “silos” of information technology into one big barn. Eventually, though, results will be measurable.

“If we’re not better able to distribute hunting licenses and drivers’ licenses,” Conley acknowledged, “people will be able to see.”

Given the recent history of IT innovation in Colorado government, seeing will be believing.

Copyright 2007 by Jim Spencer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.