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State court deal nears $2 billion [The Sacramento Bee, Calif.]
(Sacramento Bee (CA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Oct. 25--An effort to create a centralized computer system for California's state courts, originally conceived as a modest upgrade in a few counties, now faces total costs approaching $2 billion and is years away from large-scale implementation, an investigation by The Bee has found.
The project has ballooned in scope and costs since its 2001 inception without the scrutiny other state computer systems face because the state Administrative Office of the Courts is not bound by the same project review requirements.
Amid California's budget crunch, which has closed state courts one day a month, the computer project jumped into the spotlight. A state Assembly committee will hold a hearing this week to review overall spending growth at the courts' administrative office. The governor's technology watchdog also is evaluating the computer project.
"We're shutting down courts so we can have a ? computer system," said Dan Goldstein, a San Diego Superior Court judge. "There's no reason to build empty courthouses with vast new computer systems."
The man leading the push for the system is Ronald George, chief justice of the California Supreme Court since 1996. The computer project is integral to his decade-long effort to shift control of the courts from counties to the state.
"When I became chief justice it became apparent to me that we weren't really functioning as a judicial branch in anything but name," George said.
Allowing courts to interact online made perfect sense. But the technology upgrade stalled in the hands of a failing company and then lumbered along, while costs mounted, leaving George increasingly fielding questions about how sensible that plan really was.
Past computer woes
State government history is littered with computer projects that came in over budget and under expectation.
The Department of Education just launched a system to track student data, for instance, with a budget of at least $42.6 million, including some ongoing costs -- more than triple its original $14.4 million estimate. Already, users are reporting problems.
Like other executive branch departments, the Education Department had to run its technology project past the governor's watchdog, the state's chief information officer, completing a feasibility study upfront and filing reports along the way.
Because the Administrative Office of the Courts is part of a separate, judicial branch, it has no such requirement. In fact, decisions ultimately lie largely with the Judicial Council, headed by the chief justice, who appoints 14 of 21 voting members.
Five years ago, the state Legislative Analyst's Office criticized the court administrators for moving forward with plans to expand the computer system statewide despite inadequate oversight and analysis.
Noting in its evaluation of the 2004-05 budget bill that the courts' administrative office was unable to provide cost estimates for various phases of the project, the legislative analyst said that "places the courts at greater risk for cost overruns, and delays for lack of adequate funding to complete the projects."
In response, the courts' administrative office provided a budget indicating that the system would cost $260.2 million through 2008-09.
By the end of 2008-09, however, $394 million already had been spent, an increase that court administrators attributed to added features.
For weeks, The Bee asked the Administrative Office of the Courts for cost estimates at junctures where critical decisions were made about the system. Spokesman Philip Carrizosa said none existed.
Now, the office estimates that the full state rollout will cost $1.3 billion more, including some ongoing costs. But even that figure doesn't include the full amount local courts and law enforcement agencies must pay for additional hardware and training.
The six courts currently running early versions of the system report spending about $36 million in local funds not included in the courts office's current figures.
With 58 counties' courts slated to install the system, plus law enforcement and other agencies, local spending could amount to hundreds of millions of additional dollars -- pushing the final price tag over $2 billion.
The state judicial branch's budget was $3.9 billion last year, a combination of state general fund money and court-generated revenue, such as fees and fines.
The court administrators must submit annual budget requests to the state Department of Finance, said Ruben Gomez, a senior manager in the office's finance division. Following the legislative analyst's critique, the Legislature also began requiring annual reports on the computer project.
"Everything we do is subject to overview by the Department of Finance," said George, the chief justice. "It's not as if we're handed a pot of money, I assure you."
But officials at the Finance Department said they have no idea how much the computer system has cost taxpayers. Reports to the Legislature don't show how much state general fund money has gone to the system either.
Outdated technology
It would be natural to assume that all courts use one high-tech computer system that can pull comprehensive reports with the press of a button. That's the way it works in the movies.
Instead, many of California's courts rely on technology that is closer to the old video game Pong than Starship Enterprise, meaning a judge hearing a domestic violence case in one county might not know about pending charges in another county.
"The consequences are bad for law enforcement and citizens," George said.
Discussions about improving court technology started in earnest in 2000, when court officials asked for money to upgrade a half dozen outdated systems. The state agreed but questioned why only a few courts should benefit, said Ron Overholt, deputy director of the courts' administrative office.
So, in 2002, with $21 million in state seed money, the office began planning to upgrade courts in six Southern California counties. Those plans would change markedly over time.
The office hired a major technology and consulting company, Bearingpoint, to create a Web-based system to manage criminal and traffic cases in two county courts for $1.5 million. Later, officials added nine counties to the plan before switching to another company after Bearingpoint foundered.
Well before the courts administration hired Bearingpoint, however, the company's past troubles had raised questions about its ability to handle the job.
In 2000, CarsDirect.com sued Bearingpoint (then called KPMG Consulting Inc.) in Los Angeles Superior Court over customer-tracking software problems, according to media reports. In May 2000, King County, Washington, fired KPMG from working on its financial computer system, which was over budget, incomplete and undependable.
The administrative director for the California courts' southern region defended hiring Bearingpoint, saying it had installed previous systems in Ventura and Orange county courts that worked well.
"Just because things go bad somewhere else doesn't mean the team you have isn't living up," said Sheila Calabro, who chairs the computer project's oversight committee. "When they stopped living up, we got rid of them."
In 2006, with Bearingpoint reeling from a class-action lawsuit for misstating earnings, court administrators decided to transfer the work to Deloitte Consulting LLP.
Bearingpoint's mistake, a former Deloitte employee told The Bee, was trying to do too much with a limited system.
The system used in Ventura and Orange counties was a client-server application -- essentially living on the courts' computers, said Peter Kelly, a senior consultant and deployment manager for Deloitte from January 2006 to April 2007. Bearingpoint tried to take that system and make it a Web-based application for other courts.
"I think the AOC should have pulled the plug on it earlier," Kelly said.
The two companies worked side by side for 10 months in 2006. During that transition, the new system was installed in Fresno Superior Court.
But so many problems arose in Fresno, with computers continuously crashing, that court administrators delayed adding the other 10 counties, Kelly said, and ultimately scrapped that plan altogether.
Today, the courts office still is paying for the Bearingpoint system, which Fresno alone continues to use. On Friday, the Judicial Council discussed spending another $4.9 million for ongoing maintenance this fiscal year.
Asked how much that ill-fated system has cost in all, state court officials could not come up with a total.
No-bid contract questioned
When court administrators gave Deloitte a $99 million no-bid contract in June 2007 to develop the third and final phase of the project -- to add family and juvenile cases and link all systems statewide -- Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Stephen Czuleger, wrote to Calabro, the oversight committee chairwoman.
Czuleger questioned the push to award a no-bid contract when the courts' administration had yet to complete a "business case" -- a plan outlining what the system ultimately would be and why it was needed. An outside consultant's report had warned against starting a project without such a plan, Czuleger wrote.
Executive branch agencies must routinely submit such a business case. That consultant's report, from August 2006, said: "Not doing so exposes even the best-run project to individual, subjective views of success which are often driven by opinion, perspective, and too often politics. As Gartner (another AOC consultant) points out, 'If enterprises do not do a business case up front, they will often have to conduct one afterwards, generally in a hostile environment.' "
That hostile environment seemed to arrive this summer, when judges angry with the Judicial Council's closure of courts one day a month began agitating about wasteful spending. The still-incomplete computer upgrade drew particular ire.
In response to earlier criticism from Czuleger, Calabro in 2006 had said court administrators hoped to have a statewide system in place by July this year. Now they plan to have the full system up and running in just three courts by 2012.
In light of the state's current budget deficit, they say they are no longer sure when the system can go statewide.
Six courts are running a more limited early version of the system for their civil, small claims and probate cases. Reviews are mixed.
Sacramento judges complain the system is slow. The electronic filing feature isn't working yet, requiring lawyers to print documents and submit them to clerks, who must scan the filing back into the court's computer.
During a recent meeting at which the Administrative Office of the Courts and Deloitte unveiled upcoming e-filing features, Sacramento Presiding Judge James Mize noted several glitches.
"When the computers were booted and the projectors were readied and our attention focused, the ? presenter pressed the button to commence the demonstration -- and the result was less than satisfying," Mize wrote in an Aug. 31 letter to the Judicial Council.
"But what was much more revealing than the fact that it did not work was the fact that all of the experts present from the (courts' administrative office) and Deloitte seemed surprised and embarrassed that it did not perform while ? those of us present from the court were not at all shocked."
However, Kim Dunning, Orange Superior Court's presiding judge, sent an Oct. 5 letter to the Judicial Council filled with glowing testimonials from judges and administrators.
Retrieving information is easier, the cost of storing paper files is down and the system is streamlining operations, Dunning told The Bee.
But she also said she understands concerns over the price tag.
"It's taken a long time, and it's cost a lot of money. I think that's pretty much a fact," she said. "In 2001-2002 we probably underestimated the magnitude of this endeavor."
Call The Bee's Robert Lewis, (916) 321-1061.
To see more of The Sacramento Bee, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.sacbee.com/.
Copyright (c) 2009, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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