The State Worker

A California Senate budget subcommittee delivered a setback to a planned upgrade for the state's job website today by rejecting a proposal to fund it.

The California Department of Human Resources figures it will take about $10 million over four years to make the jobs.ca.gov portal more user-friendly. It would absorb a little more than 80 percent of that cost, but Brown's 2013-14 budget proposal includes $821,000 in supplemental funding. (Click here for a recent State Worker column about the project.)

The three-member Budget Subcommittee No. 5 gave the funding a thumbs down this morning. Chairwoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, noted that an earlier estimate of the project figured it would cost half as much and that the state's high-tech history is pockmarked with failure.

The program may be dead, but the spending isn't over for the state's defunct payroll system overhaul.

Gov. Jerry Brown's budget includes a $14.5 million allocation for legal costs and computer data clean up associated with the MyCalPays system that Controller John Chiang killed earlier this year.

Brown's January budget proposal called for $38 million and 150 positions to finish implementing the program, but Chiang canceled the contract with tech giant SAP after a series of error-filled test runs raised concerns that the project could never expand statewide.

Chiang spokesman Jacob Roper didn't have a detailed breakdown of how the controller will spend the reduced allocation.

The governor's budget revision says part of the money will pay for 40 temporary positions to move employee payroll accounts that were part of the failed test runs back to the old computer system, fix errors and make employees whole.

Some of the money will pay for legal costs. Chiang has said he will sue SAP, which has said it fulfilled the contract's terms.

In total, the controller's office has spent $262 million over nine years on the project. Lawmakers first approved funding for a state payroll overhaul in 1998.

PHOTO CREDIT: State paychecks roll off a printer at the State Controller's Office on C Street in Sacramento. Randall Benton / Sacramento Bee 2003 file

Our column in today's fiber/cyber Bee looks at the California Department of Human Resources' retooling of the state's job application and testing processes after taking over the project from the State Personnel Board.

The piece references the Legislative Analyst's Office summary of findings on the Examination and Certification Online System, which is now estimated to cost roughly twice its original $4.7 million estimate with a 2017 launch date -- nearly two years late.

Print space limitations kept us from mentioning that LAO recommended the Legislature require CalHR make quarterly progress reports.

"Given the history of this project," the LAO's summary says, "... we recommend that the Legislature require (the Technology Agency) and CalHR jointly submit quarterly reports on the project's progress to the chairpersons of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee and fiscal committees."

CalHR "pretty much agrees," said department spokeswoman Pat McConahay. "We're going to be very transparent about this."

IMAGE CREDIT: Computer server image, courtesy Hewlett Parkard / Sacramento Bee 2000 file

A group that lobbies for government openness has given California an "F" for spending transparency.

The California Public Interest Research Group and its national counterpart, USPIRG, hammer the Golden State in a report on states' use of web technology to open their books for public scrutiny.

The report issued last week assigns point totals and letter grades to all 50 states' transparency websites based on content and user friendliness.

The Golden State ranked 49th, with just 37 points out of a possible 100 points. North Dakota placed 50th, with 31 points.

With just 400 to 450 words for our weekly State Worker column, most of what we learn each week never sees print. Column Extras give you some of the notes, the quotes and the observations that inform what's published.

Today's column takes a look at government culture and a few ways that it clashes with information technology. The piece quotes John Thomas Flynn, who was California's first chief information officer in the Pete Wilson administration.

A registered Republican, Flynn ran last year for the Assembly District 8 seat. He finished fourth in a primary field of six candidates. Democrat Steve Cooley won the November general election.

Flynn follows state government tech like the Bee's Matt Barrows follows 49ers football. Flynn's blog, TechLeader.TV, regularly features IT types from various departments.

Today at 11:30 a.m, Flynn's scheduled guest is Chris Cruz, chief information officer for the California Department of Health Care Services. You can watch the webcast live by clicking here.

PHOTO: John Thomas Flynn / Sacramento Bee file, courtesy John Thomas Flynn

With just 400 to 450 words for our weekly State Worker column, most of what we learn each week never sees print. Column Extras give you some of the notes, the quotes and the observations that inform what's published.

Our column today takes a look at Controller John Chiang's decision to ax a $250 million payroll system upgrade program. We wondered what it says about the MyCalPays project and California's 30-year trail of information technology failures, a path paved with hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money.

So we asked Chiang spokesman Jacob Roper what lessons have been learned from the payroll system saga, a project inherited from former Controller Steve Westly. Here's Roper's emailed response and more info about a new state IT task force commissioned by the controller and Gov. Jerry Brown:

A Folsom-based technology company has developed a new mobile device application that it predicts will become the go-to source for looking up California state employee phone numbers and email addresses.

Kiefer Consulting Inc. introduced the CA State Directory mobile app at the Government Mobility Conference earlier this year. The app uses public records in the state's database, but users can edit information and forward the corrected data to the state, which can then change its records.

The program also allows users to call and email, add information to contact lists and send vCards for address book updating.

When asked how state workers have received the product, company spokesman Chris Loeffler said that the response has been generally positive, although some government employees would prefer their direct lines weren't so accessible.

"However, they are state workers and their role is to support citizens," Loeffler said. He also thinks the app will expedite employee-to-employee contact as individuals and departments see the value of the service.

Kiefer Consulting developed the app in "about a week," Loeffler said. California gets the home-state discount -- no charge -- but the firm plans to sell similar programs for the other 49 states. It also has fielded inquiries from potential advertisers, Loeffler said.

The app is available for devices using Apple, Android and Windows operating systems.

IMAGE: Courtesy Kiefer Consulting Inc.

CalPERS new computer system is continuing to miscalculate some pension deductions, despite a modification that fund officials said had fixed the problem.

The issue came up Tuesday afternoon during a report to the fund's Pension and Health Benefits Committee by Donna Lum, Deputy Executive Officer for Customer Services and Support. Tuesday's Bee highlights some of the report, which you can read here.

CalPERS spokesman Brad Pacheco is checking on how many members are affected.

We've embedded a real-time transcript (which may not be an error-free verbatim record of the proceedings) at the end of this post and highlighted the exchange between Lum and board member J.J. Jelincic about the "unfixed" pension deduction problem:

Goverment tech expert John Thomas Flynn has scheduled Keith Tresh , California's chief information security officer and the director of the Office of Information Security, for a live interview this morning on TechLeader.TV. The topics on tap include:

• Security, privacy and data protection policy for the state and how it's being implemented.
• Whether agencies and departments complying with those policies and other best practices.
• Recruiting and training the state's technology work force.
• The emergence of cyber-security as a national security concern.

Click here to watch the show live at 11:30 a.m. today.

As noted in today's State Worker column, the FI$Cal project is struggling to find funding and skilled employees to execute the plan to merge departments' array of dissimilar IT finance and operations systems into one.

It seems like any time the state takes on an ambitious project that it runs into trouble: cost overruns, staff who jump ship, vendor problems, service contract cost overruns and the like. Take our poll to register what you think:

With just 400 to 450 words for our weekly State Worker column, most of what we learn each week never sees print. Column Extras give you some of the notes, the quotes and the observations that inform what's published.

Our column in today's Bee outlines State Auditor Elaine Howle's update on the Financial Information System for California, the biggest information technology project in state government.

Click here to read Howle's latest FI$Cal report, which has more details about the project than we could cram into our column.

This is Day 3 of "Dialing for CalPERS," a regular (and highly unscientific) feature that reports how long the fund's Interactive Voice Response system tells us we have to wait to speak to a representative when we call in.

We also received an email from CalPERS spokesman Brad Pacheco that explains how the wait estimates that callers hear on the phone are longer than hold times they actually experience.

Welcome to Day 2 of "Dialing for CalPERS," a regular (and highly unscientific) feature that reports how long the fund's Interactive Voice Response system tells us we have to wait to speak to a representative when we call in.

We called CalPERS today at 10:13 a.m. and worked our way through the automated phone system to the death benefits unit to get a claim status. Estimated hold time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.

Curious to see if the hold time was the same if we were seeking other information, we called back and navigated to retiree health benefits, specifically long-term care. The phone system suggested we check a specific website, call a different number for information or speak to a CalPERS representative. Hold time for that: 1 hour, 23 minutes.

CalPERS has said it's working on getting the telephone hold times down and has statistics that indicate that actual telephone wait times on average have been about 30 minutes. Fund spokesman Brad Pacheco is working on getting new figures, which we'll share here. Click here for more background. Next week we'll start a chart to track the results from our daily spot checks.

IMAGE: photobucket.com

We're unveiling "Dialing for CalPERS," a regular (and highly unscientific) feature that will report how long the fund's call-routing Interactive Voice Response system tells us we have to wait to speak to a representative when we call in.

Today we navigated the system to the retiree death benefits at 10:30 a.m. The IVR voice on the other end of the line said we'd have to wait 1 hour and 33 minutes to speak to a representative.

CalPERS is continuing to experience "unusually long" wait times when members call in, the fund's recording says, a by-product of a transition to its 3-month-old, half-billion-dollar computer system. The State Worker has heard from dozens of disgruntled government employees and retirees with tales of phone waits of up to 2 hours or more when they're trying to get information or straighten out errors. (Click here for a recent report on the CalPERS computer system.)

Fund spokesman Brad Pacheco said in a Nov. 29 email that the fund has been fine-tuning the telephone system and offered these statistics:

During the 10 weeks since we launched my|CalPERS, 34 members out of the 98,000 calls answered waited more than 2 hours.

During the last 2 weeks, 3 members out of the over 17,000 calls answered waited more than 2 hours. Our average wait time for members over the past two weeks has been 27 minutes.

We'll post CalPERS' lastest numbers when they become available and we'll continue our own little spot checks. Don't be surprised if on-hold times are up, since December is a heavy month for the fund's call center because so many employees retire at the end of the year.

IMAGE: photobucket.com

We never get all of what we learn into a news story, but this blog can give users the data, the notes and the quotes from the notebook that informed what was published.

Our story today reports on CalPERS' problems with its new computer system, dubbed my/CalPERS, and its implementation, the Pension System Resumption Project. Since the system's startup in September, the fund has been slower to process death benefits claims for some members. The delayed payments have prompted some health insurance providers to take some members off their rolls for failing to pay their premiums -- which must be deducted from the death benefit payments).

CalPERS says it's giving the matter top priority and that no one is in danger of losing their medical coverage because of the computer problems.

Want to dig deeper? Here are some of the documents that informed the story:

The transcript of the CalPERS Board of Administration meeting on Oct. 19. The my/CalPERS discussion starts on page 48.

The transcript of the Nov. 16 CalPERS Board of Administration meeting. Scroll down to page 53 for my/CalPERS talk.

An Oct. 31 performance report on the transition from CalPERS' old patchwork computer system to the new one. We thought one of the metrics on page 2 was particularly interesting: "CalPERS reputation may be damaged if Judges and Legislators functionality is not properly implemented."

IMAGE: www.freeclipart.com

With just 400 to 450 words for our weekly State Worker column, most of what we learn each week never sees print. Column Extras give you some of the notes, the quotes and the observations that inform what's published.

Our column in today's Bee briefly refers to part of a report by the San Diego-based Telework Research Network that concludes the state could save millions of dollars each year by letting employees telework two days per week.

The report goes further, estimating that teleworking at both state and local government levels would have a total impact on budgets and social costs of $6.1 billion, as the chart at right shows. (Click it to enlarge.)

Some experts, such as Cal Poly Pomona professor Ralph Westfall, caution that telework impact estimates are often overstated by firms hoping to cash in on the trend. (Click here for links to some of what Westfall has written about the topic.)

Experts from the public and private sectors are meeting at Sac State on Thursday for a "Work Anywhere Symposium" to talk about government telework. (Click here for the event's agenda.)

Our State Worker column on Thursday will look at California's experience with the policy -- about 5 percent of state workers do some work away from the traditional worksite, according to the Department of General Services -- and the hurdles to expanding it.

So what do you think?

Our Monday post on estimates that California state government could save $1.5 billion annually if it launched a serious telework program prompted a range of comments from blog users. Here's a sampling of remarks followed by a poll to take a broader sounding of what State Worker blog users think:

A new study concludes that California could save $1.5 billion annually if employees with jobs that could be done from home would telework two days per week.

Most of the savings would come from increased productivity, lower absenteeism and reduced turnover, says the Telework Research Network, that describes itself as a consulting firm "that specializes in modeling the economic, societal, and environmental benefits of telework and workplace flexibility." Teleworking also could save the state several million dollars in real estate expenses.

The Southern California-based company announced the telework savings estimates in advance of its participation in The Work Anywhere Symposium on Sept. 22 at California State University, Sacramento.

We'll just say it: Despite chronic complaints and stereotypes of California's Department of Motor Vehicles, we think DMV is easily one of the most innovative and user-friendly agencies in California's state government.

The latest proof is DMV's new website, which department spokesman Mike Marando says reflects a continued push for services designed to "help customers do business on their time, not on our time."

The American Society for Public Administration's Sacramento chapter will host an expert discussion tonight about how managers can use new technology to get the best results out of their teleworking employees.

The group says as the generation of digital natives joins the workforce, more employees will be working away from the office. But federal, state and local supervisors don't necessarily have an easy way to keep an eye on them. Dr. Milton Chen , chief executive officer of VSee Labs; Tony Souza, vice president of Secure Computing Environment and Michael Dziak, chief operating officer of e-Work.com, will be showing off best practices to change that.

The event runs from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the USC State Capital Center at 1800 I St. in Sacramento. Attendees can RSVP to Paul Danczyk at danczyk@usc.edu or (916) 442-6911, or participate via online stream here or by phone at (800) 509-6344 and access code 0846955.

We mentioned on Monday that the state Department of Public Health has reported it suffered its second sensitive data breach in a year. That led us to ask, what has the department done to tighten its data security since last year?

The latest case involved someone copying files with names, addresses, Social Security numbers and other information on about 9,000 current and former employees onto a separate hard drive that was taken off state premises.

The first case happened last September when a Southern California field office mailed an unencripted computer tape. The opened envelope arrived at Sacramento HQ, but the tape containing sensitive information about 2,550 facility residents and employees, didn't.

There's been no known misuse of the information in either case.

We asked Public Health spokesman Al Lundeen what the department did after the tape was lost in the mail. Here's his e-mailed reply:

Sensitive information on about 9,000 current and former state employees was copied and removed from state offices, the California Department of Public Health has announced.

The security breach, the second to hit the department in a year, involves most current employees at the state Public Health and Health Care Services departments, and nearly 3,000 employees of the former Department of Health Services. The copied information included individual names and addresses, Social Security numbers, ethnicity, birth dates, compensation records, employees' next of kin and their addresses.

In a statement, CDPH Director Dr. Ron Chapman said, "We regret that the personal information of our employees was compromised. We take the breach of any secure documents very seriously and are committed to taking steps to minimize any impact of this action and further strengthen our security policy."

The department says that there's no evidence that the information has been misused, but it's still offering free credit monitoring to anyone caught up in the security lapse.

Someone tripped the department's security detection system on April 5 by copying the information to a private hard drive. CDPH investigators subsequently discovered that the hard drive was removed from state premises by an employee, according to the department press release. The employee, who was not named, is on administrative leave while the investigation continues.

Last Friday's announcement was the second time that Public Health officials have had to announce a personal information security breach. Last September a computer backup tape mailed from a Southern California field office never made it to department headquarters in Sacramento. The tape contained medical records and personal information of about 2,550 facility residents, staff and health care workers.

We've been hearing from folks in various units of the Employment Development Department that their access to The State Worker has been cut off.

Given some of the challenges that The Bee confronted with access from state computers, we figured that these complaints were part of a problem on our side of the Web.

But The Bee's corporate tech staff at McClatchy Interactive fixed the problem and confirmed it a few weeks ago. So we contacted Patti Roberts at EDD. Here's what she e-mailed last week:

With last Friday's deadline pushed back for Gov. Jerry Brown to announce two lists of suggested government spending cuts, TechLeader TV blogger and broadcaster John Thomas Flynn has his own list of information technology cuts. Together, he says, they amount to about $5 billion in savings:

• Eliminate $1.8 billion Financial Information System for California (FI$Cal) Project
• Terminate California Court Case Management System (CCMS) immediately - Savings: $1.5 billion
• Intensify fraud and waste investigations of Medi-cal and other state benefit and revenue programs - Savings: $1.5 billion
• Re-examine IT scope, schedules, and procurement strategy, even canceling several non-performing projects could easily shave 10-20%. Savings: $500 million+.

Click here for Flynn's analysis on the TechLeader.TV blog.

The Bee reported last week that about 25 percent of the 54,000 or so state wireless lines audited so far were unused in December at a cost to government of more than $300,000.

The state Office of Technology has been looking at the issue for more than a year, long before Gov. Jerry Brown said he wanted departments to cut their phone inventories by 50 percent. The results, according to Validas, a Texas-based a mobility service advising firm, was $2.6 million saved from using wireless devices more efficiently and negotiating lower-priced rates.

Here's the Validas report:
State of California Wireless Savings Report: January 27, 2011

We can never get everything we learn into a news story. "From the notebook" posts give you some of the extra details behind the news.

Our story in The Bee today dissects a recent DMV "request for quotation" from companies interested in performing -- for free -- a system security check for the department.

Here's more about some of the people and companies mentioned in the story, plus documents that informed our reporting:

DMV's Request For Quotation #EXE10-0024, which sought to "to acquire a Contractor to perform a no-fee security risk assessment of the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) current security operations processes."

Here are the questions raised by potential bidders about the RFQ for a freebie and the state's answers (click on it for a larger image):

Clicking here opens the homepage for A Martin Inc./WebEnforce, the San Ramone firm that literally couldn't give its service away to DMV.

Here's DMV's rejection letter to WebEnforce.

Clicking here opens IT expert Michael Krigsman's IT blog on ZDNet. This link opens the homepage of Krigsman's IT consulting firm in Brookline, Mass., Asuret.

And here are two earlier State Worker posts about Krigsman's assessment of success claims by the Office of the Chief Information Officer (now the dubbed the California Technology Agency) and his subsequent reassessment.

IMAGE: www.freeclipart.com

California spends $8 billion per year on information technology and yet, as Bee columnist Dan Morain pointed out in a recent column, the government is having trouble issuing drivers licenses. It's ironic that the birthplace of Apple, Cisco and Google often struggles when it comes to delivering its state government IT projects on budget and on time.

That disconnect is why three organizations are sponsoring a forum next week, "Optimizing IT Procurements in Times of Fiscal Austerity," at the USC Capital Center at 18th and I streets in Sacramento on Thursday, Feb. 17, from 5:30 to 7 p.m.

The University of Southern California State Capital Center, Sacramento State's Center for Collaborative Policy and the American Society for Public Administration are backing the event, which will feature a panel discussion with several IT experts from the public and private sectors.

Can't attend in person? You still can follow the discussion online or on the telephone. Click here for a press release with more details about remote access and the forum panelists.

IMAGE: www.freephotos.com

The Bee launched a new comment system on Wednesday -- and it has a few bugs to work out for Internet Explorer 8 users.

The most common complaint that we've fielded is that logged-in users can't figure out where to write their comments. The former system's comment field was located at end of a story or blog item and before the posted comments. With the new system, Disqus, the comment field is at the bottom of the posted comments under "Add New Comment."

But if you're using IE 8 -- which we understand is the default browser for many or most state PCs -- you'll see "Add New Comment" but no text box for your comments. That's one of the glitches our IT staff is working to fix.

Firefox users don't have this problem, so if you can switch to that browser to surf sacbee.com, we highly recommend it.

We've received several dozen e-mails and a handful of phone calls about the new system's shortfalls. A few people have asked if the change to Disqus and the commensurate problems arising from the switch are a backdoor effort by The Bee or The State Worker to tamp down comments that are sometimes critical of our coverage.

Quite the opposite. Disqus has features (when working properly) that allow users to follow comment threads via e-mail, log in with their Facebook or Twitter accounts and edit their own posts online. The move to the new system was made to enhance and expand comment opportunities and exposure, not restrict them.

So hang with us. When our techs smooth out the kinks in the system, we'll let you know.