Oversight Panel Recommended to Coordinate New Computers

Citing a lack of supervision over the installation of a massive crime-fighting computer for the Police Department, a Los Angeles City Council committee recommended Wednesday that a panel be formed to oversee operation of the system.

Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, head of the Information Technology and General Services Committee, made the recommendation, saying he believes some of the glitches that police say plague the system are due to lack of oversight.

Without such a panel, he said, “there will be some finger pointing about who is responsible for what.”

The system, which will cost $16 million when completed, was paid for by the Mayor’s Alliance for a Safer L.A., a group of private contributors brought together by Mayor Richard Riordan to bring the department into the computer age.

Ridley-Thomas suggested the oversight panel include representatives from Riordan’s office and the Police Department as well as legislative and technical experts. Final approval for the panel must come from the full council.

But Councilwoman Laura Chick, who heads the Council’s Public Safety Committee, said she supports the proposed oversight panel because efforts to install the system “lack coordination” between the alliance, the Police Department and other city departments.

At a previous hearing before Chick’s committee, police officials reported that the system has been plagued by glitches, computer viruses and other problems since installation began in November.

But on Wednesday, Jim Crain, assistant general manager of the city’s Information Technology Agency, said Riordan’s upcoming budget will solve one of the departments biggest problem by paying to staff a 24-hour help desk to answer questions by officers about computer problems.

City officials declined to say how much the help desk would cost, saying only that the budget will pay for 12 new positions.

The department has only 11 trained analysts to address problems for more than 3,000 users at 900 work stations located at 22 police divisions, according to a city report to Ridley-Thomas’s committee.

When completed in June, the system will include 1,250 work stations citywide, generating 20,000 requests for help per month, the report said.

“Currently, these calls are being handled in a stop-gap manner,” the report said.

Despite the glitches, police and city officials say the system already provides police the ability to write reports on computers and file copies into a main-frame system. Police had previously written most reports on paper forms that were filed in folders.

The system also allows police to send electronic messages to each other and to access local, state and federal criminal databases and research state criminal and civil codes.