Make It Work
When stories of troubles involving the Virginia Information Technologies Agency and Northrop Grumman first broke, we suspended judgment. We preferred to wait until the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission investigated the situation and issued a report. Last week JLARC released findings. The partnership is not living up to expectations. Although responsibility for the glitches (and worse) is shared, Northrop Grumman bears the greater burden.
JLARC's basic conclusions include: "NG's services have provided some initial benefits; inadequate planning by NG largely led to delays; changes are needed to NG's services; VITA's contract oversight unable to prevent delays; contractual issues need to be addressed; current IT governance hinders agency operations; modernization and integration of IT may benefit state in long run if certain changes are made."
The JLARC document supplies details. A December report will supply additional information, which could affect perceptions.
Although the partnership may prove disappointing, it must be remembered that it came into being because Virginia's IT program was a mess. Gov. Mark Warner's administration considered a public-private partnership a vehicle for ending the inefficiencies and confusions within a broken system. The approach qualifies as an experiment -- albeit a very expensive one. As JLARC makes clear, things were done that ought not to have been done, and things that ought to have been done went undone.
Flaws in governing structure should be easy to address. VITA's head, for instance, should not be named by an independent board but should be nominated by the governor and subject to General Assembly confirmation. An agency as essential as VITA to the smooth operation of state government belongs fully inside the executive branch. Ultimate accountability must rest with the governor.
Virginia would pay a prohibitive price to terminate the contract with a chop. Northrop Grumman possesses the capacity to deliver. And while its performance thus far dismays, skeptics wonder whether the bureaucracy has cooperated sufficiently.
The VITA/Northrop Grumman arrangement has implications for public-private partnerships generally. JLARC lists several lessons: "Vendor's experience and understanding are key elements for success; success is enhanced when all parties fully understand the goals of the project and have demonstrated the ability to meet them; partnership still requires experienced staff in the public entity; partnership may not produce savings; full and careful evaluation of proposals is critical."
If the report seems prosaic, then that is because common sense usually is. Today's Op/Ed Page includes letters about the JLARC report from Virginia's Chief Information Officer and Northrop Grumman.
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Reader Reactions
@Tech Head:
“Ignorant” isn’t an insult. It just means “lack of knowledge”. Are you saying that you know everything? I pointed out things in your post that were factually incorrect. I attributed it to ignorance, because I assumed that you were NOT lying.
You’re right that VITA entered the contract voluntarily. We can say their were duped (or even “ignorant” of the implications of some of those provisions), but that’s beside the point. If they made a bad deal, something has to change. Who will be held accountable?
Should it be that taxpayers? Because they seem to be the target of NG’s solution: they are asking for more money. They are lobbying JLARC behind closed door to change the audit report to be less critical of NG. They are spending money on radio and TV advertising to improve their image with the public. Should the taxpayers pay for that?
Ultimately, NG and VITA were both ignorant of the complexity of the IT systems in the state, and how much it would cost to consolidate and support those systems. NG has even admitted as much. Is that an insult? It’s as accurate a description as any.
If Rtdlid follows directions such as the rules for this blog then maybe you should be in charge of this whole contract.
Those being
“Please avoid offensive, vulgar, or hateful language. Respect others.
We all have an opinion and we all do not know every aspect of this contract. No one person knows every piece of it because if they did this mess would not be here.
You are correct in saying the proposals were unsolicited but you fail to mention 4 other proposals were also submitted to VITA and VITA chose NG. By using the wrd bid, I may have mistated but that is petty in the scheme of it all.NG did not bribe or hold them hostage to make the deal. VITA selected NG of free will.
We could get into the dotted I’s and crossed T’s all day but taking it personality is one of the issues why the two parties cannot mend the fences of this deal. Calling people ignorant out loud for a slight miswording only shows who is really ignorant.
Gee, Tech Head, I guess you’re right. We should have qualified it by saying “legally ripping off the state”, since they have a legitimate contract and all.
VITA did not “create” this contract, or put it “out for bid” at all, it was an unsolicited proposal. Check out the history a little bit before you make ignorant comments.
The “Out of Scope” issue is interesting, because some of the language is vague, and specific items have been declared in and out of scope without any clear reasoning. ITIB and VITA are complicit in allowing this to happen. For instance, it’s clear in the contract that NG is responsible for accommodating the agencies’ existing applications, and performing tasks necessary to ensure that the infrastructure supports those applications. It’s clear now that this is not happening, though, as agencies either have to modify their applications to fit the infrastructure, or come up with their own solutions.
It’s clear that you either do not know what is happening in the execution of this contract, or you are a shill for NG.
I continue to see and hear comments in this Blog about NG ripping off the State. Tell me all of you who say this, who is the actual person receiving the rip off money? What is his or her name, Please tell us all? What company do you know can take in money from a contract without a vendor agreement? No one can, NG cannot get money they are not entitled to by contract to receive, and it is that simple. VITA is the agency who created the contract, put the contract and working requirements out for bid; they listed requirements in the contract and all of the things they wanted to be covered. What they did not or forgot to include is covered by the term “Out of Scope” such as one reader mentioned. If VITA did not put language in the contract to lets say repair stand desktop printers, then if NG gets a ticket to repair a stand alone printer and they do it. Are we to say they should do it for free, of course not? Do you walk in to Walmart and buy a pair of pants and expect to get a shirt for free, of course you don’t. You then would not go to the paper and state “You know I bought a pair of pants and those crooked Walmart people would not let me have a shirt for free, they know if I buy a pair of pants I definitely need a new shirt to go with it” whets up with them? They are ripping me off.
Now that may be over simplifying this a bit but that is the exact same situation here. It is not NG’s fault that VITA forgot to put a shirt as part of the wardrobe buying scenario and therefore Walmart is ripping the public off.
What you do not hear is the many times said agencies do not let work take place when NG schedules work in their facilities, they have this project going and you cannot stop that, we have the general assembly going, you cannot repair that or come in and even update the server because something MIGHT happen and interrupt that!! They do not let in teams to count PC’s because they have done that already but in an effort to do task hindsight is always 20/20. If they have to count things 50 times isn’t that better than saying nope you are not coming in to our agency and believe you me, you do not get to come in. That is why half of these projects are running behind. Even VITA will not allow NG to do certain task that are in the contract. Like security updates because the agency griped loud enough and refused to let it occur sometimes with no reason or again because it might affect something they are in the middle of. They will not let a phone upgrade take place and be off in the middle of the night because that is a 24 hour support item. If it breaks because you let it get so old you cannot repair it that seems like it would be worse than doing a planned outage doesn’t it.. No instead let’s keep it hanging on and hope it does not break and of course NG isn’t allowed to fix it when the work load is at its slowest. We would rather we let it go, not plan for a newer version and go down at the worst possible time and take 5 times longer to repair and then blame NG for it going down…Don’t confuse me with the facts Jethro!!
All of this is not to say NG does not have issues because they do, I am not here to say they are without fault because they are not but a lot of this is because they are not being allowed to do the work when it needs to be done.
I bet most Virginians do not realize VITA puts a surcharge above and beyond what NG pays and charges VITA for almost every single item they purchase and adds it to the NG price. If a Printer is purchased NG relays the cost to VITA and VITA adds an amount too the device and bills the agency. This is fact and not conjecture. Multiply that times 67,000 PC’s and 5000 servers, thousands of switches and routers and so on. The additional cost is not NG’s doing in this case!!
Another reason to be alarmed financially is that VITA personnel size has grown in volume over the last 4 years by leaps and bounds. On federal contracts you have a small handful of Civil Service workers who oversee millions of dollars in contracts but at the state level VITA doubles or even triples its size since the beginning of this contract, they have no bodies that actually do service work for the Commonwealth. They just oversee it and advice but yet they have added a good amount of contractors making over 6 figures to their payroll. If the newspaper wants to look into that then they should request that info. Ask for the numbers of employees before and since July 2005 and see what that produces. If the salaries of those contractors and FTE’s were displayed to the public, I bet Virginians would be astounded. NG has nothing at all to do with that. I think Mr Coulter is on the right track by thinning out some of the upper management of VITA. He is seeing what an albatross he is truly managing. He sounds like has some you know what and isn’t afraid to start attacking the issue at the root, within his own organization.
Wow! what an experiment.
For the state to think agencies can just divorce IT as a responsibility to NG without in-house expertise shows the lack of forethought in this whole venture and reveals they were just hoping it would work, and that mean incompetence.
This will be expensive, more than it’s worth. Agencies still have their work to do for the Commonwealth and our best and brightest has made it more difficult.
Here you go:
Just this morning we’re troubleshooting a problem and it takes about 10 people and those 10 people contacting another 10 people while those 10 people’s bosses chime in about what their bosses say and then they come up with an agreement about what the problem is and they’re wrong.
RE: [rtdild] “NG has no interest in fulfilling their responsibilities”
Au Contraire! Please reference minutes from 2009Q2 conference -
We have to acknowledge that NG does want to fulfill their obligations because they are a for-profit company.
This means money for them. This makes their continued documented inability to fulfill contract terms on a consistent basis disturbing. If NG is unable to act in their own best interest when it involves a subject near and dear (money) what hope do Virginia taxpayers have for competently planned and executed IT services?
NG has no interest in fulfilling their responsibilities under this contract. It’s obvious that it was nothing but a vehicle for them to gain control over Virginia’s IT infrastructure and use that to extort money from the state treasury.
They have reduced service to unacceptable levels, added recurring charges, often duplicating the same services in multiple bills, and sometimes simply double-billing. They declare traditionally regular support as “out-of-scope” and expect to be able to charge extra for those services. Then they add new limits to services, such as storage or email or network bandwidth or desktop specs, then they claim when those levels are insufficient that agencies will need to pay extra for “premium” services or additional space.
When complaints about this scam start to surface, NG hires marketing firms and lawyers, and the BILLS the Commonwealth for those charges!!
It’s bad enough that no NG, VITA and ITIB executives will never be brought up on criminal charges for this scam. To think this corruption might be allowed to continue is outrageous.
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