A multimillion-dollar IT project has gone belly-up in California, throwing into stark relief the many ways in which a big and well intentioned technology strategy can come undone.
Background: Over 10 years ago, in 2001, the judicial council of the State of California, which sets policy for the state's enormous court system, approved the creation of the California Case Management System (CCMS). The goal was to replace 70 individual software systems for managing cases in California's various trial courts with a single system. According to a prepared statement from the council this week, "The concept was to improve public safety and business efficiencies by enabling trial courts to exchange information with each other as well as other justice system partners, such as law enforcement and to improve service to attorneys and the public."
Sadly, a decade and $500 million in taxpayer money later, the reality has fallen far short of the splendid vision. Just two "interim" systems are in place at seven of the state's 58 courts. That equates to CCMS handling about a quarter of the state's trial information.
Meanwhile, an independent report from Grant Thornton LLP puts estimates for rolling out the latest version of the software to 11 courts by 2020 at over $300 million.
So amid a general outcry about wasteful spending, the judicial council has agreed to stop deployment of the entire CCMS project. A CCMS Internal Committee will oversee how the courts can make best use of the technology they already have.
What went wrong? First off, the money ran out. Since 2008, the state of California has cut funds to the judicial branch by $653 million. There have been shutdowns of courts, layoffs, and reduced hours. Hardly the atmosphere for rolling out a project priced at a total of $1.9 billion.
In February, the California State Auditor listed several other elements that contributed to the demise of CCMS:
Lack of planning. The Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC), which was charged with overseeing the CCMS implementation, didn't perform the necessary cost/benefit analysis or cost estimates prior to launching the project. According to the auditor, "in 2004 the cost estimate was $260 million and by 2010 the estimated cost was $1.9 billion."
Lack of coordination. Apparently, the AOC didn't successfully keep track of the project, documenting its ongoing expenses and goals.
No buy-in. The project barreled ahead without the funding and approval of all 58 of California's courts. This resulted in a piecemeal implementation, and without all the courts included the value of the project was reduced. Further, the superior courts have dug in their heels, complaining about the system and refusing to move ahead with it.
No independent oversight. Despite the enormous size of the CCMS project, the AOC didn't enlist ongoing outside advice -- virtually a necessity in a project this huge -- until the rollout was underway. As a result, mistakes were made that were difficult to correct or reverse.
In fairness, there are observers who maintain that CCMS as it's installed is an improvement. "CCMS works. Unfortunately, we don't have the resources to deploy it," stated Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye in this week's judicial council statement.
Despite defenders, the colossal project and its stoppage has drawn plenty of negative attention. Here's how Michael Krigsman, CEO of consultancy Asuret, summarizes the situation:
California has a history of developing large, multiyear projects with enormous budgets. Unfortunately, the state's track record includes cost overruns and delays such as demonstrated here. This is not a new problem for California, a state that can ill afford this level of waste. Given this history, it appears the state needs to develop a new paradigm for IT project delivery, probably based on more decisive leadership and smaller projects. Certainly, the current approach is not working well.
The CCMS constituents have also been mocked heartily. Check out the video below:
There must be a better way! The scenario you describe could have happened on Mad Men.
It's still amazing to me that a project could become so big and ungainly -- even though smaller portions did work. Why didn't anybody ask more questions sooner? Golf and lunches are one thing; but the SI was also sufficiently reimbursed to warrant some accountability.
Don't you all see the modus operandi after all these years?
The SI company, we all know who they are, and in this instance mentioned just once in five web sites, wine, golf, and dine the decision makers for up to three years. Yes, they have the staying power. Typically a partner needs to generate revenue of $100m every three years.
They then draft a sure-win contract, where the SI gets paid no matter the outcome. Of course the program managers, directors, procurement experts, lawyers on the buyer's side thought they had a water-tight contract. But also being recipients of wine, golf, and dinner, they tend to be a little lenient when some of the obviously one-sided clauses that provide for an escape come up for clarification.
The reality is that the SI can be incompetent to manage a project of such a scale, and has no intention other than to make money, and more money through variation orders along the way. VOs are the greatest profit generator as the buyer is by now locked in and stuck and in a non-negotiable situation.
The buyers are newbies when it comes to buying IT systems. They will be held responsible by the SI for failing to provide clear non-conflicting requirements and specifications, failing to provide answers to queries promptly or accurately, failing to organize the resources to review the system at various stages of development, and failing to conduct the acceptance tests (basically debugging alpha and beta versions of the system) in a competent manner and presenting the defects in the allocated time window. As a result, the system is automatically deemed received and accepted, according to, what else, the contract.
Such stories will repeat for many decades to come.
Starting small... what a concept! This project certainly appeared to be doomed by enormous and unreachable goals and expectations. It toppled under that weight. While some portions of the project were clearly successful, it looks like the big goal was fundamentally unreachable. It might have been better to have built on a few projects organically than to try for this world-beating vision.
Indeed, scucci, this situation has happened more than once. High-ticket consultants can hide behind noble concepts and fast talk, it seems. Better to go with a vendor or a smaller firm in some instances.
So years agao they set out with a worthy mission, but somehow got lost among the way. While, this is certainly a cautionary tale about IT gone wrong and bureaucracy, the issue of too many systems and inadqueate information sharing in the California system still exists. It seems like stopping the plan is an easy decision - albeit 9 or 10 years too late.
More importantly, how do they move forward to serve the California public. I hope they begin to look at smaller steps, ways to get started, ways to have interim or partial successes. They should Dream Big (which they have been doing), but start small and find success.
The way laws change, people switch jobs and technology changes - any government project with a long timeframe seems doomed from the gate.
I've sadly seen this happen in both small buisiness and large business. I've seen many companys stick with high profile consultants and end up throwing money at their name, instead of their service.
Yes. That is way too much money to waste on a poorly executed project, especially in a time when government offices all over the US are supposed to be more mindful with their IT spending.
The ThinkerNet does not reflect the views of TechWeb. The ThinkerNet is an informal means of communication to members and visitors of the Internet Evolution site. Individual authors are chosen by Internet Evolution to blog. Neither Internet Evolution nor TechWeb assume responsibility for comments, claims, or opinions made by authors and ThinkerNet bloggers. They are no substitute for your own research and should not be relied upon for trading or any other purpose.
Facebook and Twitter are great for posting cat pictures. But are people really using social media for life-changing communications? Like, if a hurricane comes by and blows down their house?
In a standout presentation at the Jefferies 2013 Global Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in New York this week, the UK government talked about becoming a "very intelligent client."
A consumer business would have to be crazy or desperate to change call-center software in December, the peak of the holiday season. But that was exactly Positec's position.
To help enterprises deploy software faster for mobile, social, big-data, and cloud applications, IBM this week acquired development tools vendor UrbanCode.
Internet Explorer seems like a relic of the 90s, like parachute pants and Friends. But that's just me. I'm a Chrome guy, and before that I used Firefox.
New tools like laptops, tablets, smartphone, and wireless connectivity let us work from San Diego to Katmandu, and anywhere in between. But time management remains a problem.
Showing results is the best way to win over social business doubters, according to Mary Maida, Medtronic lead information solutions manager. Internet Evolution's Mitch Wagner interviewed Maida at the E2 Innovate conference.
Companies need to take advantage of new technologies to simplify interfaces, improve capabilities, and enhance back-office processes. But they can't upgrade their Websites too often.
Wells Fargo uses social software to replace email chains and help its sales team collaborate more effectively to land deals, according to Kelli Carlson-Jagersma, VP Collaboration Strategy for Wells Fargo. Mitch Wagner spoke with Carlson-Jagersma at the E2Innovate conference
A survey by JD Powers found that customer interest in product features is lessening as phones evolve. Rather than features, price is driving purchases, and that change could have a dramatic impact on how IT departments secure these devices.
Businesses helped neighbors with Internet access and mobile device charge-ups during Sandra. Following that example, enterprises should consider preparing Internet disaster plans to help the public during disasters.
A recent release of the popular TweetDeck app for Twitter power-users gives new life to software that had previously taken a wrong turn. Here's a quick walk-through of the new TweetDeck, to show you why it should be at the top of your Twitter toolkit.
The bring-your-own-device approach isn’t suited to monitoring of enterprise equipment and processes. In these cases, it is up to IT to come forward with gear suited to the task.
The very low-tech "scrum" project technique introduces "crowd talking" to projects and also sets the entire crowd to problem solving. So far, these new social-media-style meetings appear to have supercharged project execution.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Subsidized handsets, rather than locked handsets, should be the focus of regulators. We're not getting good deals, not fostering innovation, and weakening our power as buyers.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
your weekly update of news, analysis, and
opinion from Internet Evolution - FREE! REGISTER HERE
Wanted! Site Moderators Internet Evolution is looking for a handful of readers to help moderate the message boards on our site – as well as engaging in high-IQ conversation with the industry mavens on our thinkerNet blogosphere. The job comes with various perks, bags of kudos, and GIANT bragging rights. Interested?
To save this item to your list of favorite Internet Evolution content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
Email This
