Taxpayers May Pay for Continued Delay

(Washington, D.C.) – Los Angeles Chief Technology Officer Randi Levin has for the second time formally cited the failure of the Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) to provide e-mail services for all city employees in an August 17, 2011 letter.  Unlike her November 17, 2010 Notice of Deficiencies, which just cited the delays, this letter demands that CSC pay the city for maintaining two separate email systems through November 12, 2012.  

CSC admits that Google Apps for Government cannot meet the U.S. Department of Justice’s security and data requirements for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and other law enforcement agencies, meaning that the agencies will continue to use GroupWise for their email. 

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) first raised cost, security and privacy concerns in regard to the CSC contract in an August 5, 2009 letter to the city council and a July 27, 2010 press release.  To date, taxpayers have been forced to continue paying for 13,000 GroupWise licenses for law enforcement agencies, while 17,000 employees in other agencies have switched to Google.  As part of a proposed amendment to the contract in her August letter, Levin has demanded that CSC reimburse the city for the GroupWise licenses through November 20, 2012.

“Taxpayers deserve to know how much this abrogation of the CSC contract has cost them so far and how much more it will cost if CSC refuses to cover the 13,000 GroupWise users through next November,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz.  “There should be complete transparency about the total cost of running LAPD on a separate system, including support staff, lost productivity through the use of two separate email systems, and hardware and software maintenance.  Taxpayers also need a new estimate on savings, since the city was supposed to save $6.25 million in license fees over five years by switching all of its employees from the current productivity software and email system to Google Apps for Government.”

As CAGW noted in “Cloud Computing 101,” moving to the cloud will provide savings and gains in flexibility and productivity for government agencies.  However, procurement officers must be well-educated about the true strengths and weaknesses of cloud solutions, and how they meet the mission critical needs of their agencies, especially law enforcement.  Best practices for cloud computing for government should be established and utilized across the country.  While Google is citing Los Angeles on its website as an example of success, it would be difficult to imagine that the current deal would be emulated by any government entity around the country.