Behind the scenes, a major backlash against the Virginia Information Technologies Agency seems to be underway. One bill favored by the Kaine administration, but since deep-sixed, sought to transfer power over the purchase of computer hardware and peripherals to the Department of General Services, which oversees procurement for everything else in state government. Meanwhile, Sen. Ken Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, has pushed a bill that would direct the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC) to evaluate the cost, quality and value of services that VITA provides state agencies.
After I raised a number of issues in a recent post, VITA chief Lemuel Stewart offered to address them. He invited me to the Commonwealth Enterprise Solutions Center, the state’s new IT nerve center south of Richmond, for a tour and interview. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse.
Today’s e-zine column, “Curriculum VITA,” summarizes my findings from that visit. Let me make this very clear: This is just one side of the story, VITA’s side. I did not have the time to solicit quotes from agency administrators, most of whom would have been politically constrained in any case from stating their true opinions. Even so, Stewart makes a strong case that VITA has racked up impressive achievements in overhauling an IT infrastructure that had operated inefficiently as some 90 disjointed, feudal-style entities across state government. Accomplishments include:
- Greater security from a catastrophic failure of the system due to a hurricane, hackers, saboteurs or some other external cause.
- A statewide IT system built on 2000s-era technology, a big upgrade from the ’80s-era technology that served about 60 percent of the state bureaucracy.
- Leveraging the state’s size to drive down the price of PCs and applications, saving tens of millions of dollars each year.
- Electricity savings from energy-efficient PCs, servers and other hardware — the benefit for which shows up in agencies’ electric bills, not their IT budgets.
- No IT project failures, in contrast to a track record of tens of millions of dollars in pre-VITA projects that crashed and burned.
Plus, there’s one more benefit that I didn’t get into the story: Construction of a back-up facility in Lebanon, in Southwest Virginia, by VITA partner Northrop Grumman, creating more than 400 quality, knowledge-economy jobs in an economically distressed region of the state.
Stewart attributes the dissatisfaction to three primary causes: (1) agency loss of authority over IT projects costing more than $100,000; (2) the migration of state government to the new system one agency at a time, delaying the benefits for some; and (3) changes in the formula that allocates IT costs between agencies, resulting in some winners and some losers. When the three-year transition phase winds up by the end of this year, he predicts, much of the unhappiness should dissipate.
To repeat, this is Stewart’s side of the story. If you have other perspectives, please consider this blog a forum to air them.