Editor’s note: In a pair of posts a couple of weeks ago, contributing columnist Vivek Wadhwa highlighted the antiquated nature of the state of California’s IT systems and the way contracts for those systems are doled out to legacy IT firms. He then challenged Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to come up with ways to rebuild California’s IT systems at one tenth the cost. California CTO P.K. Agarwal responds in this guest post with his own challenge: walk the talk and give him your best IT ideas. He’s even set up a crowdsourcing site to gather them.
Vivek, I’m glad to see you are challenging the readers of TechCrunch the same way you challenge the audiences of your speeches.
The debate that has erupted on TechCrunch in response to that challenge is particularly interesting to me because it focuses on a question that my colleagues and I have spent a lot of time trying to find an answer to: What’s the best way to migrate California’s legacy portfolio to new technologies? And there are many other related questions.
Like most governments in the US, California has a significant portfolio of legacy applications. Also like most governments, we are in the midst of converting many of these to newer technologies. Much of this migration work is being done in conjunction with our vendor partners, but we are always looking for more ways to get companies to work with us. Not just because we have an abstract appreciation of innovation, but because competition, between companies and ideas, produces better results for the state and its taxpayers. As a part of that shift, we are finding ways to ease the burden of doing business with the State. For instance, last year we made major strides in streamlining our procurement processes to make IT projects more timely and transparent.
We in Sacramento are not under the delusion that we have a monopoly on good ideas. We would like to channel the energy and enthusiasm of your readers to help us strengthen how we build and deploy IT in the State of California.
So how do we do this? I propose we engage in an online dialogue.
Since a good number of the readers of this blog are technically oriented, let’s “walk the talk” and use a crowdsourcing tool to get a consensus on the popular ideas. Using the link below, I encourage your readers to provide ideas, review and comment on other people’s ideas, and vote ideas up and down. As the tool aggregates our judgments, certain ideas will rise to the top. I would then take the top ranking ideas and further refine them through an interactive dialogue. This would not only be a valuable exercise for California, but hopefully a rewarding activity for your readers.
So please take a look at http://ca_it.ideascale.com and give us your best ideas.
Your guest author left out a few key actionable elements. Paradigm, Synergy, Manage Expectations, Traction, Going Forward
I love this kind of parody.
this is a parody.. right?
lol
Can the author link us to the website with the contracts/proposals to bid on???
Perhaps our own large server array could handle some of the capacity if modified for the requirements. There is just no way to know without seeing the proposals.
Are these contracts from the state open bid???
Please answer some basic questions before asking for our comments or help.
If we go to the effort of really engaging with this, will California take action?
An attempt to flamebate California?
I didn’t get any indication of taking action in characterizing this as a “valuable exercise” at the end. I read that as absent any form of commitment from anything resembling a state stakeholder.
This could easily be cleared up with a qualifying statement — one way or the other.
we elect the bums and pay their salaries. must we do their jobs too ’cause the misguided professor says so?
If California were really serious, they would accept the response-to-the-challenge offered by Vivek.
I believe two companies stepped forward to take up the gauntlet…
the fact that he didn’t bother responding to my question tells me everything I need to know.
Willing to talk the talk but not fire the vendors perhaps?
I’ve never understood the amazing complacency some companies/agencies have for their solution providers.
To do it cheaply I am thinking they need to higher the right company to build a new platform for them that will allow other developers to build on top of it.
The problem here ends up being security though. This will drastically reduce cost by making it easier to develop their new systems but also causes issues to hackers having access to the source code. Someone really smart will need to figure this out.
This might sound like a stupid point, but seriously, an underscore in the URL domain?! I didn’t even know that is possible, and I’ve been in the industry for 5+ years. If any normal citizen saw that, they would be totally confused.
What idiot chose that? Another example of how out-of-touch Sacramento is.
“Normal citizen” is a bad word choice. I mean “normal” as in “not working in this industry”.
And I’m back. Half the links on that website don’t open in new tabs because they have been written in terrible un-degradable JavaScript.
Not to mention all the “test” ideas that should never be seen on a live site.
Here is my suggestion: Fire every developer and manager who worked on this website.
OK, now I’m just plain angry.
Table-based layout, 800 HTML validation errors (new world record?), 60 CSS validation errors, unusable, and hasn’t been tested on a screen-reader at all so is inaccessible (criminally?).
Michael, this website is a startup that P.K. is making use of for this purpose. It was not developed by government IT.
Nothing inherently wrong with table-based layouts… although I don’t like to use them, some very popular sites still do and I’ve seen them do a very good job of it, too!
It looks like Techcrunchies got duped into being the beta testers for ideascale. The site pretty much sucks. Every visit there, something is changing and not always for the better. Now I have to sign in, but I can’t use my Google Id or WordPress – it’s broken.
It seems to be working fine for me today. I was able to logon with my google id.
As someone already pointed out, the ideas are being generated on a non-government website. I personally am glad to see this challenge and opening questions up to the public to vote/comment on. Do you have any IT ideas for CA, or are you just going to keep complaining about ideascale?
“Real Time Matrix will make a $5 million bid to produce a 100% non-proprietary system to process California’s unemployment checks upon receipt of detailed specifications, and we’ll deliver the solution in less than a year.”
These are not requirements. We need to see the real requirements in order to have an accurate idea of the costs. By we, I mean everyone.
What is being said here is the same thing being said by the people who put the Virtual border system together.
http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_12819545
Guess what? You budget low, and you end up embarrassed and paying later. This is like the dude that fixes your car wrong, only to have you bring it back in and really pay the piper.
Nobody wants this. Contractors that offer this need to be taken to town by the government.
What about the 1 billion dollar virtual fence proposal???
http://www.cbspressexpress.com/div.php/cbs_news/release?id=23807
None of this cheap crap works. The people that write these proposals should be deported instead of the immigrants looking for honest work.
There should be a new law that says that if you make an inaccurate proposal, the government does not pay you more money to fix it. You go to jail.
I guarantee we would stop getting these miracle claims within 5 minutes of the law being passed.
You people are very wrong, nothing will change because people will not allow their jobs to go away. Once you create a goverment job everyone will put up barriers on why we cant. This is what is so great about this country, everyone puts roadblocks, you go to work and nobody wants the status quo to change.
There are two things that strike me the post:
1. We come up with the Idea, but the same old vendors continue to develop it. In my opinion the ‘debate’ was about letting California startups develop the updated tools that are needed, not to come up with ideas that the same vendors will charge billions to develop.
2. To propose better ways of doing things, one would need the list of current things that are up for development. The government has a list of things they have budgeted to develop/create that have been legislated, those are the things that we’d like to bid on. Not things that need legislation that will be approved 5 years from now!
Step1: don’t use java or .net
step2: don’t purchase any system built with java or .net.
Why do you not like Java? What do you suggest to use? PHP?
Step 3: Fire any analyst that leads with “don’t use x technology”.
This is really sad. CA can’t or won’t pay to get the right people on staff and keep them there. Like other governments, the political BS is high, the pay is low, and even when you do an outstanding job you are lucky if you are rewarded with a 5% increase of your already low pay. Government is set up to take full advantage of Parkinson’s principle as well as hiring sub standard people to do substandard work for substandard pay. No state gov’t is in the trouble it is because the right people were given the right tools and the right compensation to succeed.
I hope you get some good ideas submitted to you, but if you are not listening to your own people and their suggestions for fixes, why would you listen to anyone else.
Gregg – Though your comment has some merit, the right staff is a matter of experience and opinion. I been doing IT for over 25 years, both in the private sector (80%) and the public sector; fed and state. And in both environments you have the can and cant do people.
From my experience most of the problem stems from the process of bringing people up through the system and since alot of managers like people who keep to themselves and don’t make waves, they have a tendancy to look past the talented ones, such as myself. I worked on more projects in my 25 years than any 10 people in my discipline, yet I spent more time out of work during recessions than most. One reason, I say what I mean and damned the weak chinned SOB or ignorant wanna-be that can’t handle it. And lets not forget mention the Libertarian minded consultants that never seem to finish a task because they feel they aren’t getting paid what their worth or may have to take a drug test.
On top of all that I get to see jobs performed by individuals that have been educated to a substandard level in a foreign country and think they are the best and brightest.
Most entrepreneurs are out for the quick buck, the DOTCOM bubble taught us the real nature of Silicon Valley buttheads, corruption is still King, even in the private sector.
I work for a state agency and manage to accomplish more in a day, than alot of private sector people do in a week. I get done in 4 days what some can’t manage to accomplish in 6. Why is this, am I a wizkid, hardly. Positive mental attitude, correct work ethic and a “take no shit” attitude. But there is an issue with people like me in government jobs, aging bureacrats don’t want to hear it and the Office of the State CIO is under too much pressure to cut back on costs than it is to perform. If I challenge them, I lose my job and if I lose my job I will have to compete with 3 million other IT people that lost their jobs to H1-B NIV workers from the Far and Near East. Since at the moment, they seem to be to preferred choice of the corporate sector since they take less pay and don’t make noise.
As a state worker, not CA, I recommend that the state consult the end user to make sure the UI is usuable. My state did not do that until after the program was built. It was built to fit the needs if admin not those that input data, search data and update. Admin only really looks at reports. The results have been a time consuming multiple keystrokes and general unyieldiness.
@PK
Good to see you taking the initiative and reaching out to the citizens. I only wish that you had used a California company like ours (@UserVoice) to do it
* UserVoice is SF-based and market leader in these sorts of crowdsourcing initiatives (see our Compete scores)
* We’ve worked with a number of local, state and federal agencies (see http://ideasforseattle.org and the Gov 2.0 award winning http://budget.santacruzcityca.gov/)
It’s not too late. We’ve moved a number of organizations from other platforms to UserVoice. Drop me a line (rich AT uservoice.com) and we’ll get on it immediately.
Richard White
CEO, UserVoice.com
Dear Dear Sir,
I would have loved to see you take this effort to its ACTIONABLE end when you say:
“I would then take the top ranking ideas and further refine them through an interactive dialogue. This would not only be a valuable exercise for California, but hopefully a rewarding activity for your readers.”
What do you commit to do post “refining top ranking ideas through an interactive dialogue”
Show me some skin in the game.
Agree Michael. I’m angry too. Sacramento outsourced a lot of work to major US firms who sub-contracted the work to foreign developers that resulted to all the bad systems. Clearly you can see a lot of the web apps are creating less than 15 years ago. They are not legacy (mainframe or pre-1996). I hope they are not trying to collect ideas (using “crowd-sourcing” as a gimmick) and outsource the work again. Let’s hope they are not sending recovery money to overseas this time. Can someone do a study on how much they spent on outsourcing IT in the last 15 years. Who they contracted the work too and follow the money into who eventually does the work. We need to keep them in check folks.
you (or san jose) should be embarrassed that you posted here…
my god man.. if you’re going to use a college url, at least have basic spell/grammar check!
thanks!
hmm…
The fact that the CTO for CA, P.K. Agarwal would even listen to the rabble rousers at TC is extremely laughable, yet somewhat comforting.
I applaud the fact that someone from the state wants to reach out for the more serious comments on how to reduce the cost of state functions, as well as to improve state processes. This in and of itself is a good thing. To think you’re really going to get real/inciteful answers from the bulk of people here.. not so much!
For my $0.02 worht, it would probably be a good thing/idea for the State to have a system to post the problems/issues (big/small) that the state recognizes as existing. This could give readers/viewers some mechanism of understanding what some of the current issues are.
The state could then also implement some sort of program that allows a state worker/resource to be eligible for a reward which would be a % of the savings over a certain time period, if a solution where implemented that dramatically reduced costs for that particular issue…
The final piece of this issue would be the need to have a system where the ongoing work/solution would be available for thepublic to review what’s going on on a periodic basis..
These ideas would provide additional transparency, as well as allow for additional thoughts/ideas to be identified/worked through for the given issues within the State operations… And like i stated, finally, there would be a motivated resource/team within the State process who could then take ownership to getting the solutions implemented..
peace…
Maybe if we get all the Indians out of the conversation some actual quality IT will happen.
Oh, wait, Meg Whitman is going to be the new Governor. Never Mind…
True. We should just recruit tea partiers and birthers. They’d do it faster.
Cuz they Smart!
Sounds like FLUFF yap..lol
NY State CIO has been doing this for a minute now!
CA should have its own idea gathering site. Ideascale’s openid pages were unavailable when I tried to use them over the course of a morning (400 errors), so I was forced to register, never receiving a confirming registration message. Ideascale lost all of the form data so I had to re-enter the idea after I registered. I never saw my idea submitted, so am not sure if it was submitted. Bad site. Would not recommend it.
Come into the game folks. Contribute your ideas. I have only seen a handfull of “real” contributions. Vivek Wadhwa deserves credit for igniting this discussion and CA CTO P.K. Agarwal deserves credit for engaging with the TC community. Lets make sure that it is not the last time state CTO’s engages with TC. Hold back the criticism and give this initiative a chance. Comment and cast your votes now.
While we applaud PK and the State of California on their desire to solicit public engagement, the comments here are indicative of the challenges that are typically faced when launching an ideation/innovation management program. Similar to the old “where’s the beef?” Wendy’s ad, the key question here is “what’s the process?” For starters, what (and really, very specifically what) is going to happen with all of the ideas that are generated?
Our experience in this area has shown that haste makes waste, especially for public sector organizations. Our strongest recommendation for any organization wanting to achieve lasting change from an innovation campaign is to be clear about the objectives, and approach the campaign in a methodical manner with trusted experts to guide you. The first 6-12 months of the development of our company were focused on authoring and developing processes to assist public sector organizations in implementing innovation and collaboration campaigns, and reflecting those into technology tools to facilitate the programs. As you consider alternatives such as IdeaScale and UserVoice, we invite you to tap into our experience at PubliVate.
Coincidentally, our Feb 4 blog posting (What is the Crowdsourcing recipe for success? http://bit.ly/dfkgJM) specifically discusses some of the different types of crowdsourcing initiatives, and the importance of selecting the right solution for the requirements.
Alexander Rink
Co-founder and Director
PubliVate.com
Startups face solid barriers to entry when you try to replace a legacy system. The “cruft” is more than code; decades of regulations, laws and codes, and practical experience informed that old code. What’s more, much of that logic and reasoning lives on only in that code. Most startups, especially of the Web 2.0+ variety, excel with small scope and a simple architecture. The help California needs starts requires much more. Payroll systems, for example, must comply with rules that vary for every county, city, state agency and union contract. Does your private sector payroll support furloughs or employer IOU statements? “Complex” is just a hint at the tangle a startup would face.
The TechCrunch landscape is littered with dead startups, abandoned offices, and 404s. More are dead than alive, cannon fodder for capitalism’s evolution. Governments can’t afford to have systems fail; people die or go hungry. So vendor selection is a bit more complex and includes the ability of an organization to survive so it can help maintain those systems.
“rebuild California’s IT systems at one tenth the cost”
This has been around for a long time now. It’s called “Linux” and “open source.” But guess what? California just keeps pouring money into Microsoft products year after year. I interviewed at one particular northern CA school district and was amazed at how much money they spent on computers. The “computers in every classroom” initiative was nice, but then when you look at it and realize that the kids are just using them to surf Facebook while the teachers have no idea how to use them you see that there’s millions and millions of dollars that are basically being squandered.
Why is Microsoft to blame for the kids surfing Facebook? Sounds like you have an agenda.
If the teachers have no idea how to use Windows how the heck will they know Linux?
The point should be that you don’t need a specific operating system to ruin an initiative. Just add bureaucracy.
BUFFER EMPTY. NO MEMORY. SYSTEM CRASH.
Boy, is this old news. And so is the solution proposed.
The roots of this problem date back 20 years when then-Governor Deukmejian refused to reform the divide that existed between the agency responsible for telecommunications and the agency responsible for IT. It wasn’t because of bureaucracy alone: the companies that served each of these artificial categories, the telcos and the computer vendors, liked it that way. That way, they didn’t have to compete.
Not much has changed. It’s foolish to write as if State workers like to be behind and without resources. It’s that way because the government is influenced by people who like it that way, either with election contributions or via lobbying in between elections. All the condescension and condemnation expressed here would be better addressed to the friends of those making such comments, who tend to be the actors that keep State government retarded.
In most cases when “entrepreneurs” have been intentionally involved with State government — usually through some special program that abrogates public sourcing regulations and thus proves unaccountable — the result is almost always corruption, overcharging of the taxpayers, and deliverables that don’t meet promises or requirements.
In other words, it’s all well and good to advocate a new, innovative, “entrepreneurial” approach to government — but advocating such programs is not new, innovative, or entrepreneurial. It’s been done over and over again. Until you reform the political system to remove private contamination of the public sector, it’s just a bunch of hot air.
And the likelihood of removing such contamination, now that the US Supreme Court appointed by that supreme innovator George W. Bush has given corporations carte blanche to buy the Legislature and the Governor — well, it’s gone to nil.
Stop blaming state government and start blaming those who profit by government waste and obsolescence: Big Business, tax evaders, and those for whom the public sector isn’t our common asset, just easy pickin’s — and those who work for them. Hey, that’s Silicon Valley!
Bob Jacobson, Ph.D.
Former Principal Consultant
Assembly Utilities & Commerce Committee
1981-1989
PS I coined the term “electronic commerce,” so don’t say I’m anti-business. Just anti-corruption.
Why does anyone accept what Vivek Fraudwa has to say about the IT industry as being a reasonable critique? If he had his way he would replace all American workers in all industries, especially the high-tech industry, with under-educated, submissive, substandard foreign workers. Does anyone wonder why he writes and teaches instead of running a fortune 500 company? Simple NO FRACKIN TALENT. His observation is not his own and there are enough articles and blogs that were written before he put finger-to-nose to dig out an idea, to prove my point.
Granted the state needs to upgrade, however you can’t do that on a deficit year. It should have been done during the 90’s boom and by people with scruples (unlike those contracted to do so and reamed the state for billions). And since a large quantity of the real talented IT people took a clue in the 90’s when companies started replacing them with outsourcing companies or NIV workers and went into Real Estate or High Finance then told their kids to avoid IT, not a lot of really talented people left out there. Or many have just given up and live on the streets now or managed to get a state job like myself.
So my advice to the CIO and CTO of the state of California, look amongst your own teams for the talent you need, respect their opinions and ideas and you may be surprised by the return on the states investment.