By Nels Johnson, The Marin Independent Journal, Novato, Calif.
County officials, mindful of the $30 million lost after a wayward computer program was scrapped just four years after it was installed, want to avoid past mistakes as they launch a new system this summer.
“The project is on time and on budget,” project manager Tim Flanagan told the county board.
Five officials headed by County Administrator Matthew Hymel said in a memo the “administrative technologies of Marin,” or ATOM project, marks a milestone as it begins a staff training program. “The key milestone to report to your board on this date is the project team’s readiness for delivery of end-user training,” the five department heads reported.
In 2006, a new computer and software system that never worked right became a nightmare as poorly trained employees tried to cope. This time around, the memo added, the training program was “designed and planned to apply lessons learned from the previous implementation.” That system became so problematic and expensive to maintain officials abandoned it four years after it was installed in 2006.
“It’s OK to look in the rear view mirror to take advantage of lessons learned,” Fire Chief Jason Weber said.
“Training is scheduled to be delivered with multiple occurrences,” the memo added. “A variety of resources will be available to support our organization through this transition, including hands-on training, detailed desktop procedure manuals, recorded training sessions for replay at user convenience, and open labs just prior and after the ‘go live’ transition.” Personnel and payroll aspects of the project will be launched next year.
“Training really is the nub of the issue,” Supervisor Kate Sears said. “I’m really glad you are paying the attention you are to training,” she added. “Now we get into the exciting go live part.”
Flanagan warned that despite an aggressive training program, the first several months of operations will be rocky as people learn the ropes and work out problems. “It will not be comfortable,” he said. “We are expecting disruption” requiring “all hands on deck.” Although much remains to be done, “we’ve got a really good team” of key staffers from across county government working on the project, he added.
The Board of Supervisors has allocated $14 million to acquire, install and initially staff the new system, with expenses including $8.2 million for Tyler Technologies of Texas, the largest company in the nation focused solely on public-sector software and services. Included in the $14 million expense is $5.9 million to pay for county staffing for 36 months as well as a $1 million contingency. Design work by Tyler Technologies has cut expected costs.
Top officials negotiated a detailed, carefully-worded software systems contract that runs more than 500 pages. The program will replace core financial, budgeting, human resources and payroll components of the troubled SAP system.
Annual ongoing maintenance and support fees will begin at $387,000 with incremental increases for 10 years, and ongoing county staff costs will be roughly $750,000 less a year than the SAP system, according to the county administration.
The county decided to junk its new system in 2010 after officials concluded it was more economical to start over than fix and maintain a program that did not work. The civil grand jury said after a probe that the fiasco cost the county $30 million.
The county filed two lawsuits, claiming fraud and racketeering and a host of other felonies, but lost money when its legal battle went belly up at the courthouse. The county board, which spent $5 million on outside legal consultants, accepted a $3.9 million settlement with no public explanation. A gag order approved behind closed doors by county supervisors gave political, legal and liability cover to all parties.
©2016 The Marin Independent Journal (Novato, Calif.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.