I typed out the number with all nine zeroes behind it to illustrate how out of touch some people are. The number above represents over 10% of this states’ current structural deficit. Deleting this number won’t make things any better but NOT deleting this number will make things substantially worse for the California taxpayer.
Truth be told, we’ve only invested about 15% of this figure into CCMS today. The remaining 85+% of the costs for CCMS are currently projected costs based on the BSA audits findings.
An IT designer friend of mine were discussing CCMS yesterday and he brought up an interesting point that makes knowing what is going on in the Sacramento Courts critical. He said “If I were a consultant out to bleed the AOC dry, I would get management to buy off on the reduced costs of a server farm in one location. I would develop my program around that one location where the program will be running, so that any other application architecture would result in costly change orders. While the application would perform flawlessly for acceptance and stress testing, what it wouldn’t be able to do is do anything that fast in a production environment. Meanwhile, I have my sign-off from acceptance testing and I know I am getting paid. When it comes to performance issues, I can always blame the telecom infrastructure because no pipe would be big enough to handle the load. You know that the AOC is not going to make the local courts pay 90K a month for their internet connections so after a bit of frustration they issue an expensive change order to re-write the application to run locally. They will have to. They’ve got too much invested at that point and the telecom costs per court location will be crippling. They will be damned if they do issue a change order for the application and damned if they don’t issue a change order for the application.”
I never told this designer that a few counties who praise this system are running it locally or that the few counties who loathe this system are running it out of the CCTC. I did tell him that the application was being designed to run out of the CCTC.
The judicial branch is only 15% invested into this project. Before the BSA audit, Mr. Bill would have liked us to believe we were more than 50% down the rabbit hole and it was too late to turn back. Damn the torpedoes, the good ship CCMS needs to move forward and it will be completed in October of 2009. Everyone, myself included, bought that argument. This argument assumed what we heard Ron Overholt tell the Assembly Committee on Accountability & Administrative Review was accurate. The total expenditure he espoused at the time, including rollout, would be 1.3 billion dollars.
We’re only 15% invested into this project – a project whose total costs remain indeterminate. The projected costs continue to rise by hundreds of millions of dollars every time someone takes a better look at the total costs and currently stand realistically at somewhere over 3 billion dollars.
Of particular interest in any cost-benefit analysis of CCMS
Focus on transaction processing times, bandwidth utilization and increasing telecom costs as being the primary excuses as to why the application does not work the way it was purportedly designed to work. Expect these costs, which are not application costs, to be excluded from any cost analysis for the application itself or to be understated by a wide margin as to keep that 3 billion dollar projected figure at bay. As mentioned by Mr. Bill, costs for other agencies (justice partners) are not normally factored into a cost-benefit analysis for any project of this magnitude. While this may be true, never before have so many justice partners need access or an interface from their systems to CCMS. Expect these too to be excluded from the cost benefit analysis as they are not normally factored in. In summary, you will see the AOC justify a much smaller figure than BSA and it will be comprised of smoke and mirrors. No worries though; 4 committees of people appointed by Mr, Bill will re-present the 50% down the rabbit hole already justification as a reason to move forward.
We’re about to see how many critical thinkers exist in California’s Judicial Branch.
Judicial Council Watcher 
findfacts
February 18, 2011
It amazes me every day when people use information that is suspect or untrue as fact to further their own agenda.
Let me say, I am not here to defend the JC, AOC, or any other state agency, what I could not let go is the fact you are using inflated numbers spouted by a member of the state legislature as factual truth. These are not even the numbers given by the auditor in their report, which are just an estimate. They do not know what the final cost will be.
The other area that amazes me is when people talk about how much it will cost to produce CCMS. It is not 1.3 billion, nor is it 1.9 billion. CCMS will be developed for much less than that, the additional costs are for state-wide deployment. Any product the JC/AOC were to use as their state-wide solution would require state-wide deployment, including training, business process re-engineering, justice partner education, changes to the justice partner interfaces, etc. Those costs would have occurred regardless of whether the final decision was a custom CCMS, or an off the shelf CCMS, which would then need to be customized for the needs of the court (at an additional cost to the state).
I await the findings of the cost benefit analysis that is upcoming, and hope there is a benefit to be had after spending the money on CCMS, but we will have to wait and see.
What I would love to see is responsible “FACTUAL” reporting on events and less of the “chick little” approach to analyzing events.
judicialcouncilwatcher
February 18, 2011
The estimates provided by Elaine Howle were very conservative estimates of 10 million dollars per court to migrate to CCMS. L.A. is currently saying no, it is more like 80 million. My primary concern is the entire costs of placing the system in every court and permitting justice partners to do their work with a proper interface to their systems. A secondary concern is the transaction times. If it takes five times longer to do something in CCMS then you’re going to be spending billions developing a system that will be costing you millions more a year to operate. The Sacramento courts are a poster child of the possible pitfalls.
findfacts
February 18, 2011
As a California tax payer, I share with you your concerns.
As to transaction times, again you are taking something said by one person or entity as the truth across the entire system. How about the judge that stood up and said that 18 months after adopting CCMS, the persistant backlog they had was eliminated? There are three courts running out of CCTC, and yet only one is vocal and in the press about problems at CCTC, the other two are unheard from, or in support of CCMS. Sacramento and their judges have a problem with the AOC, and CCMS is the easy target because of its price tag and visibility, but it still remains in use every day supporting their customer’s needs.
Please gather and provide all the facts for your readers so they too can form their opinion based upon fact and not retoric.
Thank you for providing this forum, it is needed, but would benefit from a more impartial reporting of facts from both sides of the issue.
There is an old saying about truth, being somewhere between party “a” and party “b” positions.
judicialcouncilwatcher
February 18, 2011
I just read your email asking me to delete this post as you agreed with me and didn’t wish to argue the point further. I don’t wish to appear that I am editing or deleting commentary contrary to my own as the appearance of censoring is antithetical to my overarching goal. I provided this forum so that the issues can be discussed. As I’ve stated before, I welcome challenges to my views as it keeps me honest. So I hope that you don’t mind that I approved your post prior to reading your email and would prefer to leave it here.
JusticeCalifornia
February 18, 2011
Here is an overarching concern about the numbers:
According to page 41 of the audit:
“In separate contracts entered into in June and July 2007, the AOC hired a consultant to conduct a business case (2007 consultant study) and to determine the costs to complete the CCMS. In October 2007, the 2007 consultant study priced expected costs to complete the system at $1.6 billion.”
According to page 42 of the audit the AOC withheld this information from the legislature, failing to reveal the true estimated cost of completion of CCMS.
As of April 2008, it was revealing costs of $466 million, and as of January 2009 it was revealing costs of $744 million.
Indeed, and amazingly, Vickrey and the Judicial Council were using a $1.3 billion number in response to the audit report this month. That “disinformation” is still posted on the CA Courts website.
So the questions are:
a) The AOC shredders were reportedly working overtime before the state auditor arrived to look at the books, and the auditor mentioned missing documents. So how do we know even the $3 billion numbers are real?
b) After the AOC LIED BY OMISSION TO THE LEGISLATURE, for years, about an issue of such magnitude (the true projected costs of CCMS); and the Judicial Council/AOC continues to post fake numbers ($1.3 billion) on the court website, how do you believe a word the Judicial Council/AOC says?
c) Shouldn’t there be serious consequences for the failure to be candid with the legislature and the public?
judicialcouncilwatcher
February 18, 2011
They’ve been lying to everyone about this program. But what do you do? If the institutions that respresent the rule of law in this state are found to have been factually violating said law, then the institution itself comes into question. There is no doubt in my mind that a double standard exists on a grand scale. Somewhere around a thousand CJP complaints a year and only about 10 are acted upon? Give me a break. Nobody has any oversight over construction and software programs that are way out of the AOC’s league and identified by the feds as being the most susceptible programs to fraud, waste, abuse and public corruption? C’mon. We can do better than this.
The serious consequences are something that is seemingly unheard of in the judicial branch. Holding people responsible for their behavior. They only hold people responsible for saying anything about it.
I recently explored an article on SacBee about this morass and carefully reviewed the commenters. I was not surprised to find an angry public lashing out at local court employees for the misdeeds of the AOC. It was sad and unwarranted.
SF Whistle
February 18, 2011
JCW—
You state all the attributes of a branch that is out of control—with systems in place that cause it to be immune to change. As long as there is no organized opposition things will remain as they are—
We have the recent example of Egypt—it required 30 years for an abused population to finally take to the streets.
Your observation regarding the CJP is spot-on….the office is laughable—-I have previously written about a case I am very familiar with involving the Presiding Judge of San Francisco Family Court…..he was disqualified on a 170.1 motion—almost a year ago—-yet a year later the CJP can’t figure out what to do with this case??? There has been no formal complaint brought by the CJP despite a complaint based upon facts so clear that another Judge in another County made the findings he should be disqualified…..It seems the CJP is far too busy figuring out new and inventive ways to dismiss any and all complaints?
judicialcouncilwatcher
February 18, 2011
The reason Commissioner Saldivar appears on the wall of shame is because I cannot in good conscience not consider the hundreds of lives that were ruined with unjust judgements against them. The CJP has not acted upon that complaint either and neither has the Santa Clara County Court. When he walks, is fired or is indicted, I will remove his name. In the meantime, litigants have the option of requesting a real judge to hear their case.
wendy darling
February 18, 2011
Once again, those who will not learn from history’s mistakes are doomed to repeat them.
From Dan Walters at the Sacramento Bee, published today, Friday, February 18:
Dan Walters: Technology saga adds new chapter in California
dwalters@sacbee.com
Published Friday, Feb. 18, 2011
When State Auditor Elaine Howle excoriated the state court system for mismanaging a very expensive computer system this month, it was a new chapter in an old and sad saga.
California, the home of cutting edge technology, has a very checkered history of using it effectively for government.
The “statewide case management project,” managed by the Administrative Office of the Courts, is the current poster child for rising costs and questionable utility.
Its costs, Howle noted, have escalated sharply and now are expected to hit $1.9 billion by the time it’s completed four years hence – not counting tens of millions of more that local courts will have to spend to use it. Meanwhile, many local judges are complaining that it doesn’t work well and is consuming funds that would be better spent offsetting budget-related cutbacks in court operations.
As Howle was issuing her sharply critical report, newly inaugurated state schools Superintendent Tom Torlakson was wrestling with another much-troubled technology system and IBM, its contractor.
Richard Zeiger, Torlakson’s top deputy, fired off a letter to IBM complaining that it had failed to fix problems with the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS), calling IBM’s overall performance “substandard,” and warning that its contract may be terminated “for default.”
CALPADS is supposed to be a tool that can track the progress of nearly 6 million K-12 students and give educators, politicians and the public reliable information on academic performance, dropout rates and other measures. But its implementation is many months overdue while costs have escalated, and the state faces federal sanctions for missing deadlines for reporting data on graduation, dropout and other issues.
Last October, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed $7 million for the project, signaling unhappiness with its progress. Successor Jerry Brown hasn’t restored the money and called for a review of its efficacy. His state Technology Agency, meanwhile, has tightened up oversight of agencies’ computer projects and is publishing a scorecard on how projects costing $5.5 billion are faring.
Not all state technology programs are failing. But state agencies appear to have particular difficulty with large, complex projects, especially when they are statewide in scope and involve local agencies such as school districts. One previous debacle was a statewide child support collection system.
In 2009, the Legislature’s budget analyst published an overview of technology system procurement and suggested reforms – particularly more input and evaluation before contracts are awarded and more sophisticated bidding practices – to improve chances of success.
The court system’s mess indicates that the legislative analyst’s suggestions are well-founded.