IS IT TRUE, July 23, 2013

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Mole #3 Nostradamus of Local Politics
Mole #3 Nostradamus of Local Politics

IS IT TRUE, July 23, 2013

IS IT TRUE the long anticipated and fumed about McGladrey report that conducted an extensive and invasive examination of the state of the Information Technology Department of the City of Evansville has finally been made public by the Office of the Mayor of Evansville?…it is fair to say that this report does not give the City of Evansville or Vanderburgh County high marks for anything that has to do with IT?…from paying skinflint wages that are insufficient to attract qualified candidates to the less than exemplary results that whomever the City was able to slot for the jobs were able to do Evansville once again looks like a misguided banana republic?…the remainder of this IIT will provide select excerpts from the McGladrey report and finish with a link to the full document so our readers can spend as much time as they wish dissecting this latest series of Fs earned by our city government for execution of critical tasks in a planned manner as opposed to reactionary based pissing out of fires?

Excerpts:
“we have found the City’s and County’s Service Provider to be reactive and less strategic than we would like to see, we believe this stems from inexperience of the former CIO.”

“the City and County lack strategic planning and this does not empower the departments to create real change that would improve the departments business. This also prevents the executives from planning and prioritizing large scale strategic initiatives”

“We also found the City and County support “Shadow IT” (IT Personnel that exist in other departments that have IT responsibilities but no budgetary link to IT) . This is a hidden cost that is hard to quantify.”

“The current Service Provider contract to manage the Ford Center is outside the norm for the industry. Although there are some perceived benefits of shared networking and resources, this does not justify the 8-10 thousand dollar monthly excess. The best course of action is to allow VenuWorks to manage the event hall and its entire infrastructure. Their estimated cost is $4,500.00 a month. This would be a projected Operational saving to the Ford Center between 96K and 120K a year.”

“Over the past 6 years the City and County have been operating with a CIO who lacked the proper qualifications needed to run a 300 Million dollar organizations. This has created a void in governing the relationship between the business stakeholders and the IT organization. Many organizations face this problem but struggle to fix it due to the cost of attracting a qualified CIO who can drive strategy and ensure tactical delivery. This role often exceeds 200K yearly salary in the Evansville marketplace – Gartner Group 2012 Wage Study.”

“The current IT Services Provider has done a good job of keeping the lights on in the absence of strong IT leadership (CIO). The current Service Provider’s contract does not create an environment that would facilitate and reward innovation, systemic improvement and cost reduction. The current contract invites an environment to increase devices and discourage the retirement of any devices. The contract does not provide an incentive to impart strategic vision.”

“Our investigation showed a lack of traceability around break-fix and without this documentation the city and county have no way to proactively prevent future issues and foresee system replacements.”

“The Data Center in the City Building is one of the biggest risks found in this assessment. The datacenter sites in front of a large glass window and would be wiped out by a tornado or high winds. The physical security and access to this center is below best practices for data centers housing critical HIPPA, PCI and financial data. No one should be able to enter this facility without an independent signature and ID check.”

“A few years ago the City and County embarked on selected a new financial system that would allow the City and County provide better services to the citizens and replace the antiquated financial system that existed for over twenty years. We believe the City and County selected an application that will meet those goals. They did not engage in a process that would identify key stakeholders and placed the project management responsibilities on an employee who was not qualified to implement a Financial System of this size and scope.”

“Unfortunately the Service Provider was limited by a 90K dollar spend. The average mid-level project manager in the Evansville Marketplace cost over 110K. This project requires a senior level PM with ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and financial systems roll out experience. These employees cost over 125K dollars. The 90K employee provided by the Service Provider was over his head and not empowered to affect the change needed to improve the implementation of Munis by Tyler Technology. The Service Provider should not have provided this resource and the result has reflected negatively on both the PM and the Service Provider.”

“We do not believe the comingling of city and county assets and services to be beneficial… The City and County comingle services and hardware. There is no governance to support this structure.”

IS IT TRUE there are several references to people who did a “good job” while over their head technically in carrying out simple tasks?…the unfortunate conclusions and the recommendations are for Evansville to stop hiring under-qualified people into positions that require important skills and to pony up market rates to attract the kind of talent to do their IT business in a state of the art manner?…nothing more and nothing less could be expected from a governance team that was born and raised into a system dominated by patronage as opposed to merit?…this is the culmination of 50 years of poor public policy that finally came home to roost?

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34 COMMENTS

    • You thought wrong and you are confusing pragmatic realism with conservatism. Geez man, in my writings I have supported same sex marriage, a woman’s right to choose, legalization of marijuana, and even universal healthcare. ObamaCare does not accomplish universal care and removes efficiency so I have been against it from the first read. Most folks consider me to be liberal socially but fiscally conservative. I like to call it the Guns and Roses style of government. “You can have anything you want but you better not take it from me”. Welcome to the Jungle.

      • Joe: As you know you have a right to your opinion. I believe you are wrong on: same sex marriage, a woman’s right to choose,and legalization of marijuana. Otherwise some days you are OK.

        • Disagreement is no problem. I think we will have much more agreement on economic policies that we do on social ones. You are still my friend.

    • One of the marks of “conservatism” in the modern American sense of the word is the realization that government employees are not productive employees, i.e. they do not produce a good or service that isn’t supported by force of law and paid for at the expense of free and private enterprise. This is a viewpoint also shared by “libertarians”.

      • Sometimes I wonder where all the dumb dingdongs come from.
        The Sense of Duty that motivates any Soldier, Police person, Firefighter, or Emergency personnel, to try and rescue your ass goes beyond the money believe me. NONE of these people are motivated by the money.
        It seems BL that you and I know it all,–you think you know it all,–and I know you don’t!

        • Notice you didn’t attempt to argue that bureaucrats and administrators were productive. I concede that emergency services and essential services are productive in that they produce a good or service we all need and use, but there is a larger point there – none of those essential services necessarily must be provided by government. There are such things as private police, private fire departments, private water, and yes, even private soldiers who are indeed motivated by money, which is not a bad thing.

          I’ll buy your “sense of duty” argument the moment you show me a single worker in any job you mentioned who chooses to forego his pay out of the goodness of his heart and “sense of duty”.

          • Whatever, BL, Rave on, I will not argue with your pontifications from here on out, your not worth the time. I’ll go bash my head into a brick wall instead, yeah, that will pound some sense into me concerning your posts. Bye.

          • Volunteer Firemen…In this county, have very close to the same training and certification requiremnts as career firemen, and don’t do the job for a paycheck.

          • Firstly, thanks for the debate, Crash. Surely there is no need for you to be so nasty in your approach to what I only hope is a friendly discussion of philosophical ideas.

            Secondly, I wasn’t intending to diverge into a discussion on altruism, but since I did put my foot in my own mouth… Will, I concede that about volunteer firefighters, some neighborhood watchmen, and other occupations as well. I misspoke on that point, was perhaps a bit overzealous, and I stand corrected. Many people do not get paychecks. They are usually operating in their own neighborhoods, though, which does mean there is a motivation underlying the activity beyond just an altruistic “sense of duty”. Their activities protect property and lives and property values in their own neighborhoods, the direct benefits of which they also feel. Even if they did receive a regular paycheck for that service and it came from taxpayers, I think few or none of us would consider that shameful or wrong. The point there is the profit motive is still at work. That takes nothing away from heroism. I believe they can coexist.

            Anyway, that was a sidetrack to my larger point concerning bureaucrats, government agents, and administrators being unproductive jobs. They can trace their paychecks back to taxes levied from someone else, not from a good or service they produced.

            I’m sure nearly everyone can agree that a state of affairs in which one person produces a good or service and two people are employed writing and administering the regulations on that good or service is untenable and inefficient.

            Emergency personnel, teachers, some social workers, and I’m sure some other occupations that escape me right now at least produce a valuable service. I already conceded that. I hope my detractors would concede that in many places these emergency services and teachers have been and can be successfully privatized and/or volunteer oriented, not directly supported through taxation.

          • Wayne, (I’m assuming Parke), you’re a disgrace to many private businesspeople who pay for the crap you get behind.

            Read my comments again carefully. I know literacy rates are down, but I do expect at least a little competence in this area from the leader of my own Party.

  2. I disabused myself of that notion about 10 years ago. Where the hell have you been?

    The way you get a job in government in Vanderburgh County is to be born into it. It helps if your great, great, great, great grandfather helped lay the cornerstone of the old county courthouse.

    Otherwise you are screwed in finding employment in the Civic Center.

    • Well said my friend.

      You also can add this your statement to your blog-“if you worked for the Mayor campaign you are job ready to work for the city”.

      Look and see who he has appointed to department heads and you shall understand.

  4. I like the last one mentioned. No benefit to comingling city and county assests or services. Wonder why it was pushed to begin with???

  5. Hello CCO,

    Thank You for this. Could you please provide the link to the report? I can’t seem to find it in this article.

    Thanks!

    Brent

  6. Had Jenny Collins payed attention in her Accounting Information System class, the old system and new system should run parallel for enough time for the users of the new system to be comfortable and for most bugs to be worked out. That’s the root of their IT problems. That and Mark Rolley is a con artist, but that’s beside the point. However, this Mayor insists on firing the heads of irrelevant departments while Jenny Collins and Rus Lloyd turn the City into Detroit.

  7. I would like to see a copy of the draft report that the Mayor gave to Marsha Abell and the IT guy for comments and review.

    Wonder why the Mayor didn’t give copy to the City Council for review?

    Please CCO get a copy of this McGladrey draft report and post for us to look at it.

    Oh, just in case the Mayor forgot, this report is public record because it was paid by tax payer dollars.

    • Why would you think that the Winnecke Administration would give up documents that would totally be embarrassing since the extended contract between Mark Rolley and the City/County was signed by Winnecke in February of 2011. Geez man, we all thought that Winnecke was transparent, far from the truth….oh, by the way, when Arvey was canned, IS IT TRUE that his email files were caulked full of correspondence between Johnson Controls copied off to Mark Rolley, and if true, why would it be necessary for Mr. Rolley to be in the loop??? Oh, I forgot, the original Johnson Control contract had the City wide Wi-Fi and the Optic Fiber included….umhhh…one would think we lived in Chicago!!!

  8. “We do not believe the comingling of city and county assets and services to be beneficial… The City and County comingle services and hardware. There is no governance to support this structure.” (McGladrey report)

    * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

    The “governance to support this structure” came/comes from the local political machine that has been in power for most of the last half century.

    Now that the public has spoken in no uncertain terms about the combining of city and county governments, it is time to accept that and for each separate political subdivision to provide the best governance they can while staying within their respective budgets.

    I believe that the City of Evansville will have the most problems making the needed improvements while living within its budget, mainly due to its declining population and spending over the last ten years.

    The school corporation spending under Superintendent Bertram’s Strategic Initiative was launched at a time when student enrollment was declining and the voucher system had just been approved, which was likely to reduce EVSC enrollment even further.

    This has resulted in the school corporation’s annual dominance in sequestering over half of the tax revenue you see listed on your property tax statement, even with one out of five students not graduating in comparison with (2012) Mater Die 99.3%, Memorial 98.4%, Catholic Diocese 99.5% (EC&P)

    The growth of this city is not measured in the amount of bonded debt it must service, nor in the number of employees on the government payroll. That is “machine think”, and it is so past time for the machine to be dismantled.

    ___

    • With ya’ there. I’ll not donate ANY money to either political machine. I’ll pick my battles and back an individual who won’t owe his soul to the hacks who got him “in”. Enough of the pc deciding who gets the backing[cash], and oweing all the jobs to the cronies, crooks, and clowns. Without the patronage given to the unqualified we could have good people in our service for the same money. Watch the clown show for sherriff next year, 3 card monte at it’s best.

      • Just the thought of good ethical and intelligent people stepping forward to run for office without party affiliation would be enough to warm George Washington’s heart. I know it is enough to warm mine.

        ___

    • Cronies,crooks,clowns and conmen have been running and bilking this city for along time what is new in this report!!!!

  10. “Clown Show” would be an understatement! This will be another 1-term mayor

  11. How convenient that the IT report indicates that Rolley is reactionary, and lacks strategic skills, but, the emphasis seems to be on Matt Arvey, who obviously was denied a copy of the preliminary draft so he could have the opportunity to provide hundreds of copies of trumped up documentation, similar to Rolley….Star Dust in your Kool-Aid, anyone???? Oh, by the way, it appears that Matt Arvey had little difficulty in procuring employment with the City of Virginia Beach, VA….My bid says that MRC, or whatever Rolley is now calling himself has landed a contract with that City, oh, just a hunch!

    • Hell, when Arvey was wondering the halls of the Civic Center, you would not see him without his shadow namely Rolley behind one of the pillars. Wonder if McGladrey interviewed Mr. Arvey?

  12. Conservatives are responsible for the low wages in the City’s Administration even though the Dems have run the town for decades. Yes, the Mayor is GOP right now, but the Dems have completely controlled the budget process for a generation.

  13. County Stakeholders
    • President, County Commisioners
    • County Auditor’s Office
    • County Treasurer’s Office
    • Sheriff’s Office
    • All County Departments

    The above is a listing of County Stakeholders.

    I must disagree with it to the extent that I believe it is incomplete.

    What about the members of the County Commission who are not the President? Are they not also stakeholders? Yes, the other two members are stakeholders equal to the President.

    And what about the County Commissioners? Are they not also stakeholders? After all, they control the purse strings for county funds.

  14. I have heard the “draft” report that looks like the final report was much different than the final report. Obviously someone had an epiphany and rewrote the final to say nothing except needs improvement. Instead of you should terminate and or renegotiate the contract, but I am sure those conclusions are almost the same.

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