Governor Creates Technology Czar Post : Bureaucracy: Official will have broad authority over state’s tangled computer network. Task force had recommended the move.
One week before a new audit is expected to expose the mismanagement of another multimillion-dollar state computer project, Gov. Pete Wilson moved Thursday to create a technology czar to oversee the bureaucracy’s tangled network of computer systems.
Acting on a task force recommendation made eight months ago, Wilson issued an executive order making the new technology chief directly answerable to the governor and giving the office broad authority to coordinate the management and expansion of the state’s vast computer system.
“Will this office prevent future crises?” said Lee Grissom, director of the governor’s office of planning and research. “I believe it will go a long way toward achieving that.”
The announcement, deemed long overdue by Wilson’s critics, followed findings by auditors, lawmakers and a special governor’s task force that over the years state officials had wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on dazzling computer systems that they had neither the knowledge nor the technical ability to manage.
On Tuesday, the state auditor will unveil the latest report, a $475,000 examination by the accounting firm of Ernst & Young of another trouble-plagued computer undertaking--the Statewide Automated Welfare System project.
The largest and most costly technology project ever attempted by the state, it is designed to computerize information on health and welfare programs throughout the state.
The 12-year program was initially expected to cost $800 million, but lawmakers have predicted the ultimate cost will be more than $1 billion.
The report is expected to point out numerous faults with the system’s implementation, including concerns about the management (there have been five managers in two years), gross underestimates of the caseloads to be handled and an outmoded technical approach to the project.
Previously, the most striking technology failure for the state was a mammoth Department of Motor Vehicles computer project designed to merge the state’s huge driver’s license database with automobile registration information. In 1994, after $50 million had been spent on equipment and other costs, the Wilson Administration determined the project was unworkable and abandoned it.
Assemblywoman Debra Bowen (D-Marina del Rey), chairwoman of a legislative budget subcommittee on information technology, said she found it “interesting” that after failing for eight months to act on the task force’s recommendation, the governor had suddenly, on the eve of the release of a new critical report, decided to do something.
Officials acknowledged that the governor had decided to announce the creation of the new office without having found someone to head it. Grissom said he hoped the governor will be able to name a appointee to the new $99,000-a-year job by June 1. The governor is expected to appoint Weldon Lynn Wright, now the Department of General Services procurement head, as the deputy director.
Grissom also conceded that the governor could not abolish the Office of Information Technology, which is being replaced by the new technology czar, without legislative approval. He said the governor expected lawmakers to pass such legislation in the near future.
Sean Walsh, the governor’s press secretary, insisted that the timing of the governor’s announcement and the scheduled release of the new audit was coincidental.
“There is no correlation between the two,” he said. The governor had delayed creating the new office, he said, to give a second task force of private citizens that is also examining information technology issues a chance to complete its work.
Bowen said it was too early to know whether Wilson’s action will solve the state’s computer problems. “Just slapping a new name on an organization chart won’t prevent more disasters with our big information technology system,” she said.
