PacBell Blamed for Failures of State Computers
In an unwelcome preview of what a Y2K meltdown could be like, massive computer crashes have repeatedly forced agencies throughout California to turn away customers for driver’s licenses, food vouchers and other services.
The Highway Patrol suddenly had difficulty checking criminal records. Child Protective Services could not get quick access to abuse files. For two days Glendale’s Department of Motor Vehicles office had to process driver’s license renewals manually. And one consulting firm clocked 19,000 minutes of intermittent outages--an eternity in the fast-paced world of computer technology--from January to July.
“This has been a lot worse than anything we expect from Y2K,” said Elias S. Cortez, the state’s chief information officer.
But the problem, which state officials fear may be ongoing, is not another botched computer project. It is the phone company.
Pacific Bell, hired by the state to ferry its data records across the high-speed telephone lines, is governed by a corporate culture so steeped in voice communication, state officials say, that it has had difficulty adjusting to the demands of a sophisticated data network. And they--and their consultants--question whether the company will ever be able to reinvent itself enough to adequately manage state data communications over the long term.
Company officials insist PacBell is a leader in data communications and has vastly improved its service in recent weeks, although they admit that the company has not measured up.
“We didn’t provide the quality of service that [the state] expected of us or that we expected of ourselves,” said Doug Michelman, a Pacific Bell vice president.
Hardest hit has been the agency motorists love to hate, the DMV, which has been struggling to correct a public image of indifference and inefficiency. The outages have been “devastating to customer service,” according to an internal report. And once computer service is restored, “the lines of customers are staggering.”
For many customers, the nettlesome task of renewing driver’s licenses or transferring auto registration became an ordeal. Some DMV offices called in fire marshals to control the crowds. Others closed early and turned customers away.
A few drivers in different parts of the state suffered the indignity of having their cars impounded because computer records about their license got swallowed in cyberspace.
Nutrition Program Affected
The debacle provided a stark reminder of the extent to which government has become dependent on computers and the havoc that results when they cannot function.
This summer, the Women, Infants and Children program, which provides supplemental nutrition to poor families, reported a severe drop in participation, attributed in part to the computer outages. As a result, the state has had to return $5.7 million in unspent funds to the federal government.
For poor mothers, most of whom do not own automobiles, the trek to the program’s office presents formidable challenges, said Phyllis Bramson-Paul, the program’s director. If they get turned away because computers are down, she said, they are not likely to return.
“It’s just very, very frustrating,” she said, “to manage a program that relies wholly on a communications system that is up and running and then to have it fail so repeatedly and not to be sure when it’s going to be fixed.”
The epidemic of computer crashes began shortly after the New Year, when PacBell took over the task of providing telecommunications for the state’s vast data network.
A powerful political player whose parent company is a generous campaign donor to governors, PacBell had been the winning bidder for a seven-year, $1-billion contract to handle state government’s entire telecommunications network. It was awarded in the final months of the Pete Wilson administration.
Since taking over the system, the company has gotten high marks for near-flawless operation of the voice communications side of the contract. But from the beginning, it had problems with the network that links computers.
Most of its difficulties were caused by a combination of equipment failures and software glitches, according to a consultant, International Network Services, that was hired by the state to find the source of the problems and assess the impact of the outages on the government agencies.
In some instances, the consultant said in a report, the company installed equipment that was outdated.
But PacBell’s internal procedures, which had been geared for many years to operating voice systems, added to the problem and hampered its ability to manage telecommunications for a data network, the report said.
“The majority of service disruptions and slow restoration times . . . stemmed from inconsistent or inadequate processes and procedures,” the report said.
“It’s been an unacceptable situation,” said Christina Polley, the Department of General Services’ deputy director for telecommunications.
PacBell officials said the company has installed backup systems on critical lines--all at PacBell expense--and in recent weeks there have been no major outages.
“We’ve made some drastic improvements . . . and that has given me great confidence in our ability to meet the expectation of our customer,” said Lea Ann Champion, PacBell’s president of business communication services.
She conceded the company had purchased some equipment for the network that did not function properly, but she took issue with contentions that it was outdated. “I would categorize it as a state-of-the-art network,” she said.
Sen. Debra Bowen (D-Marina del Rey) said the state is also at fault for failing to provide stiff penalties in the contract for poor service and timing the contract’s effective date to the beginning of a new administration. “This should have been done in 1998, not 1999,” she said.
The contract prevents the state from initiating any action against the company until it has failed to meet service standards for three consecutive quarters.
“You have to wait essentially an entire year before you’re able to terminate this contract,” said Bowen, who heads the Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee. “[That] really ties the state’s hands.”
State officials declined to discuss any proposed actions under the contract, although they reminded PacBell in a Sept. 7 letter that it had had “two consecutive quarters [when] . . . performance for data services constituted excessive outages.”
Cortez said for PacBell to maintain the contract it will need to shift more of its resources--especially some of its key technology experts--to the data communications network.
“The data world is a lot more challenging than the dial tone world,” he said. “It’s going to take quite a bit of effort on PacBell’s part to make this project a success. They’ve committed that they’re going to do that and we’re going to hold them to that commitment.”
State Reimbursing Affected Drivers
No one is watching PacBell’s progress more closely than the DMV, which last week was still submitting requests for the state to reimburse customers whose cars were impounded because of computer outages. The taxpayers end up footing the bill for such reimbursements.
An internal memorandum told of Debra Wilson, a motorist who went to the Yuba City DMV office March 19 to complete her driver’s license renewal. On June 13, she was stopped by a police officer in Marysville.
A quick check of DMV computer records showed the officer that her driver’s license had expired, and he immediately impounded her car. The next day, when Wilson inquired at the DMV office, she was told that computer outages on March 19 “resulted in driver’s license records not updating properly to the database.”
The DMV recommended that she be paid $255 to reimburse her for towing costs.
Bowen said the latest computer problems just add to the perception that the state, which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on failed computer projects, can’t operate data systems successfully.
“We’re in a situation we should never have been in,” she said, “and I’m sure that you have a lot of people who went to DMV and WIC offices and think the state once again didn’t get it right.”
