By Bob Walsh
One would think that the formerly great state of California could arrange to have a computer system built correctly, wouldn't one? One would be wrong.
I was peripherally involved in one such abject failure with the Department of Corrections. Much of the reason that expensive system flopped was the department personnel involved with not competent. They were homeboys, road dogs and hacks. They got a nice 8-5 M-F job for a few months so the people who got those jobs were relatives, fishing buddies and sex partners of the people making the personnel decisions. They were not people who had any real knowledge of how I.T. systems worked or even what the department really needed. The state also has the bad habit of buying systems with multiple suppliers, so the hardware people blame the software people, the software people blame the hardware and the department people haven't a clue because they are road dogs and not techies.
There have been similar expensive failures recently within the court system and for the D.M.V. Just think of how fucked up you have to be to be a fuck-up by DMV standards.
Enter, or perhaps re-enter, the Department of Corrections. They want an electronic medical records system. They have been told by the federal court receiver that they NEED and WILL HAVE an electronic medical records system. OK, that's cool. What then.
Well, the price has almost doubled to right around $400 million. It seems like the original estimate (maybe a deliberate low0ball) left out things like maintenance cost and hardware replacement. It also seems that nobody realized that the state would need to buy many thousands of portable electronic devices, like lap-tops and tablets, to access things. They also didn't both to think that maybe things like inmate requests to see medical personnel should be incorporated into the system.
Also they have now decided to include dental, which wasn't part of the original parameters. This will add more costs and more delays to implementation.
And people wonder why the state has trouble buying I.T. systems.
1 comment:
I don't care how you try to change things with state government, the Senator's son in law is going to get the job. Especially if the senator is on the budget committee.
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