The Department of Consumer Affairs is finding it difficult to recruit for nearly three dozen IT jobs approved one year ago to augment maintenance and operation of its online licensing system for boards and bureaus.
Only 11 of 34 positions have been filled so far, said Brandon Rutschmann, project director of the BreEZe system. Much of the problem stems from the fact that the jobs are only limited-term in the budget.
"We need folks that are higher-level programmers for our interfaces; we use Java, they've got to interface with multiple agencies. So we need some higher-level skills that we just don't see come in when we do a limited-term recruitment," Rutschmann told an Assembly budget subcommittee this week.
"In order to manage that limited-term budget, we've had some struggles in filling the positions," Rutschmann explained. "We've had to post a majority of them as limited term, and also manage which ones we fill as permanent in case that funding goes away. We don't want to be in a layoff situation for 34 employees. So that's been a challenge for us."
Last year the scope of the BreEZe project was essentially cut in half to address cost overruns and the system's complexity. The second and final release went live on Jan. 19, and now the Department of Consumer Affairs is shifting its focus to maintenance and operations.
Rutschmann said the department is considering different options to put the needed staff resources toward the BreEZe project. Lawmakers at the April 19 oversight hearing noted that the recruitment difficulties are not unique to the BreEZe project; it's a problem across state government.
Nevertheless, Rutschmann noted signs that BreEZe is making progress. He said 549 types of applications can now be processed through BreEZe; before the system, only 28 were online. Since Release 2 started in January, more than 35,000 new licenses have been issued, and more than 190,000 licenses have been renewed using BreEZe.
During February and March, 51 percent of the total 189,000 applications received were submitted online via BreEZe.
"We anticipate that usage to grow as knowledge of the system increases throughout the organizations and they learn about BreEZe," Rutschmann said.
