Panel Recommends Creation of State Post to Oversee Technology

A commission appointed by Gov. Pete Wilson after the collapse of a $50-million Department of Motor Vehicles computer project urged Thursday that a key state bureaucracy be junked and a powerful post of information technology czar be created.

Wilson said he will start implementing the recommendations of the task force of business executives and academics that he appointed in June to recommend improvements in the management of the state’s high-tech information systems.

Wilson created the panel after it was disclosed last spring that $50 million had been invested by the DMV during the past seven years in a computer project that will never work. Wilson officials killed the project in December.

The seven-member task force called for abolition of the state Office of Information Technology, an entity of the governor’s Department of Finance that is charged with reviewing multimillion-dollar computer projects.

The outside investigators told Wilson that the information technology office is so focused on the intricate processes of bureaucracy that its objectives “conflict with (the) departmental and project objectives” it is charged with supervising.

“The Office of Information Technology does not add significant value in either information technology advocacy or oversight,” the panel said.

The task force also called for appointing a powerful “chief information officer” who would assume overall responsibility for development and administration of information technology and report directly to the governor.

Sen. Alfred Alquist (D-San Jose) introduced legislation at the last session calling for an information technology czar who would report directly to the governor. The measure got sidetracked and is expected to be reintroduced in 1995.

Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill also has warned in a series of reports of other troubled computer projects throughout state government.