The Silicon Wall
Silicon Valley is a mere 90 miles from Sacramento. Yet, judging from the nearly $500 million that California government has wasted in the last decade on failed attempts to network its computers, Silicon Valley might as well be on Mars. In reporting the most recent debacle, The Times’ Virginia Ellis revealed last week that Gray Davis’ administration had decided to scrap the state’s $18-million attempt to link the computers in its welfare offices.
Sobered by this and other fiascoes, administration officials say they plan to halt most new computer projects until they can resolve year 2000 software problems. But the governor should also back pending legislation that would start putting remedies in place now. The problems--including thousands of poor children denied support because there is no statewide automated tracking of absent parents--are too urgent to put on hold for long.
The Senate is expected to vote soon on a bill by Assemblywoman Dion Aroner (D-Berkeley) that would start over on creating a statewide computer system to monitor child support compliance. Unless the state gets to work immediately, Washington will withhold $4 billion in federal welfare block grants.
The Aroner bill would also offer a wider benefit for the state’s computer systems by beefing up the process for accepting and evaluating bids from contractors. The state’s current bidding process is so needlessly long and complicated.Even the most incompetent contractors are not held accountable.
The Aroner bill would require state agencies to use performance-based contracting to tie payment to the meeting of specific goals rather than the mere installation of machinery and software. It would involve users of the system in the design process and make companies more accountable. Currently, the state pays for hardware and software even if the products prove to be useless. Under the Aroner bill, if a system doesn’t work, the contractors don’t get paid. The measure would glide around archaic rules requiring that contracts go to the lowest bidder, allowing awards based instead on best long-term value. The state’s Franchise Tax Board used a similar process to set up its successful computer network. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have successfully developed internal computer networks for huge corporations worldwide. There is no reason, given more realistic contracting rules, why they can’t do the same for the state.
As a second step, the Senate Appropriations Committee should approve a pending bill by state Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) that would establish a Cabinet-level information technology agency. States that have successfully harnessed computers to the needs of government all have made their chief technology officers members of their governors’ cabinets. In California, computer oversight is tucked away in the Department of Information Technology, a lower-level agency with little clout.
By passing the Aroner and Polanco bills, state leaders can start razing the Himalayan wall of bureaucracy that keeps entrepreneurship and innovation out of the state contracting process.
