RICHMOND
Virginia's ambitious 10-year, $2 billion public-private partnership with Northrop Grumman Corp. to upgrade and consolidate the state's computer systems has hit a rocky patch.
The program is millions in the red, state agencies are complaining of high costs and poor service, and Northrop Grumman is not meeting its contractual obligations, the state's chief information officer said last week. He suggested withholding payment on the company's current $14 million invoice.
A few hours later, he was removed from his job.
The shake-up got the attention of state lawmakers. Sen. Charles Colgan, D-Prince William, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has asked a subcommittee chaired by Sen. Yvonne Miller, D-Norfolk, to look into the issues raised by the ousted official, Lemuel Stewart Jr..
The committee is expected to discuss the controversy at a meeting today.
Stewart's removal appears to have brought to a head some long-simmering tensions over the sweeping initiative launched in 2003 by then-Gov. Mark Warner, now a U.S. senator, to centralize and modernize the computer systems of 85 state agencies. It is one of the most ambitious such undertakings in the country.
Some agencies are in near-open revolt, refusing to pay the invoices they receive from the Virginia Information Technologies Agency for computer services because of what they say are inaccuracies and overcharges.
Several agencies have reported that problems with computer services have hindered their performance of critical functions. In one example last July, the Department of Social Services was unable to process benefit payments for 58 hours because of an equipment failure.
More recently, a prescription drug database at the Department of Health Professions has been disabled for almost two months by a hacker attack. The department has notified more than half a million Virginians that their Social Security numbers may have been compromised in the breach.
VITA, a super-agency created by the 2003 initiative, acts as a sort of middleman between state agencies and Northrop Grumman, the giant defense contractor that also owns the Newport News shipyard. VITA is overseen by a nine-person Information Technology Investment Board appointed by the governor and the legislature.
That board removed Stewart as chief information officer last week after he gave a presentation outlining a host of problems with the Northrop Grumman contract. He was replaced on an interim basis by Len Pomata, Gov. Tim Kaine's secretary of technology.
Was this a case of shooting the messenger who brings bad news?
No, said the board chairman, James McGuirk: It was simply a difference of opinion over how to deal with the problems.
McGuirk said Stewart offered the board only one option for addressing Northrop Grumman's alleged failures: withholding payment.
"We're not trying to push anything under the rug here," said McGuirk, a Northern Virginia information technology consultant. "We just felt that the idea of paying the contractor zero was not an appropriate response while they're working through the issues."
Stewart will remain with VITA as a consultant while the board searches for a permanent replacement. He declined to be interviewed.
The picture he painted of the ongoing transformation of Virginia's information services was bleak. For the third year in a row, he told the board,
VITA's costs will exceed its revenues. The shortfall so far this year is $6 million.
McGuirk said he believes Northrop Grumman is making a good-faith effort to resolve the problems. But he acknowledged that VITA will miss a key deadline. Under the original timetable, Northrop Grumman was to take over full responsibility for operating the state's computer infrastructure by July 1. "We believe it will done by the end of this year," McGuirk said.
Some lawmakers are losing patience.
"I think VITA's an abysmal failure," state Sen. Kenneth Stolle said. "They promised a savings, and what has been delivered is a huge increase to the agencies, well above what we would have spent for those services."
The Virginia Beach Republican introduced legislation last year that called for a study of the technology agency's operations by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, a state watchdog agency.
In an interim report released in December, JLARC said it did not appear that the savings predicted by the Warner administration - as much as $100 million a year - would be realized. Instead of saving money during the 2006- 08 budget, the state had to spend $6 million for technology costs, officials said.
Kaine, a Democrat, said Stewart's ouster isn't the cataclysm some critics have claimed, and he defended the transformation effort. "From a technology standpoint we had a lot of systems that weren't compatible with each other, and it wasn't an efficient way to do business." A significant challenge, he said, is making VITA more "customer-friendly" to state agencies.
Virginia was the first state to engage a private-sector partner for an overhaul of its information technology network.
Doug Robinson, executive director of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, said it is difficult to determine whether the challenges are unique to Virginia or a byproduct of a large infrastructure transformation. There is no a state with a comparable public-private technology pact.
Recent questions notwithstanding, Virginia has received accolades for its system from the association and the Center for Digital Government.
Bill Sizemore, (757) 446-2276, bill.sizemore@pilotonline.com
Julian Walker, (804) 697-1564,julian.walker@pilotonline.com
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VITA
You have not paid too much attention to NG lately . They are really big in the IT field, and have been for quite a while.
My complaint is who in the state legislature is getting paid for their services to see that NG got the contract to begin with.
Some one in our legislature has dirty but wealthy hands, check to see who received the big contributions from NG.
Riddle me this.
When you think of the IT industry, does Northrop Grumman Corp come to your mind? I would think not! I would think if you follow the money trail you'd find the pay-off and the reason to give NG such a contract.
Oh yea, for all the switch
Oh yea, for all the switch ninjas, packet warriors, infosec types, embedded developers, computer students or other IT / computer / tech field types, there is a local website that may be of interest. www.HRGeeks.com. We have monthly social meetings, and track all of the local professional meetings and stuff. It's not commercial, just social.
It's interesting to see the
It's interesting to see the comments about NMCI, I did a short stint there. People have heard me say that I think many of the better jobs in Hampton Roads are not challenging, and by this I refer to many of the gov't contractor jobs. Working for a private company is much more rewarding. I don't want to get paid to sit and do nothing so that some billion dollar company can make more money from the gov't. In Hampton Roads most of the better paid jobs are gov't contractors, and if you think about it, it's kind of like a legitimized welfare. The fact the gov't can't hire direct because it's too inefficient to be able to fire people is silly. I can see where the IT stuff is hard, I'd be willing to bet that a large part of the people involved aren't up on their game.
The
The fact that L. Stewart, VITA's CIO, was removed shows that Northrup Grumman has taken over control of the state information networks and is using power and politics to run the show. I agree with other commenters below that this is the same sort of mess that was created when the NMCI contract was awarded to EDS. NG saw this IT contact as a way to latch onto the state cash cow and suck it dry for years and years. The Northrup Grumman contract should be shut down.
This is an example of the sort of mess created by lawyers and lawyer/politicians. If the Va Pilot or Richmond Times Dispatch were to use FOIA discovery to find out what was behind Stewart's removal or the backroom activitites that enabled NG to take over the commonwealth's communications infrastructure, it would be a good story.
treading a path of the Romans
This is a bit of a left turn but it's something that shakes me to the core and until people wake up and become proactive, nothing will change until it's too late. We as a people, culture, nation need to focus on qualities on individualism and teamwork. This snowball effect of selfishness or mess-it-up-then-apologize when exposed is going to put our nation on a path of the Roman collapse.
It's shameful that our educators, especially developmental stages, are paid what they are. If not at home, it's in school where character is built and supported amongst other factors. It's no wonder that stories like these are becoming worse and more prevolent. The Romans collapse was from the inside out.
VITA's two-way radio
VITA's two-way radio contract (for instance) was only bid to the manufacturers, which means that the local Virginia based distributors were left out in the cold. Of course, when the state needed service and support for the equipment they had purchased, they called on the local guys to do it for free. Who wins here, BIG BUSINESS!!!
VITA
Shameful -- simply shameful. This is a case of out and out greed, egos, and incompetence coming together to create this "Perfect Storm" disaster. I have seen and been through this before -- and -- I've seen millions of dollars go down the tubes for nothing! As a long time worker in the IT industry -- I learned early on that there is a right way to doing things as well as a wrong way to doing things. Why both private sector and government choose to do things the wrong way is beyond me.
Clearly the Northrop Grumman contract needs to be terminated -- but -- they are slated to take full control of the state's IT infrastructure?
The state's CIO outlines all the problems and suggests a plan to get back on track -- but -- instead a head in the sand attitude is taken by getting rid of the CIO?
Wrong things to do. And this is more like a deep pit than a "rocky patch."
Coming in on budget and on time is not the Govt Contracting Way
They design everything they contract with to have loopholes to keep the work going forever. They are Corporate greed at its best. I worked for a small contractor who got scraps from NG. It was nothing but a joke and a horrid waste of tax dollars. If I did my taxes like they did their contracts, I'd be in jail. Its the old "get your buddy rich" thing. They have deals with military guys to get the contracts pushed through and with civil servants too. Then, they promise cushy jobs upon retirement with FAT salaries for little work... just networking and more of the same. It is a vicious cycle with a lot of unneeded extras.
been there, done that
I worked for 6 moths with an IT company that did major overhauls. I was in a 1 single overhaul, for a trucking company. I am a hardware specialist.
The planners setup a timeline with inputs from programmers, implementation specialists, the company itself, and then Me, hardware and and hardware implemetation.
6 moths later, we had all in house funtioning 100%, and ready to install at company sites, including routers.