Senate budget lawmakers favor upgrading California’s campaign and lobbying database, but they remain hesitant to fund the Secretary of State’s project after a string of high-profile IT project failures in recent years.
At a recent budget subcommittee hearing, Democrats and Republicans expressed reservations about funding the project, in large part because Secretary of State Alex Padilla wants to expedite it and run it out of his office instead of the Department of Technology.
“Our history in this state, that I’ve seen on these, is when the department runs itself in terms of IT and they don’t have the IT Department expertise on their side, I think we tend to do a little bit of harm to ourselves by accident,” Sen. Janet Nguyen, R-Santa Ana, said.
Padilla and Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, are promoting legislation that calls for a complete rebuild of the antiquated online campaign and lobbying database known as Cal-Access. SB 1349 would require the secretary of state’s office to create a data driven, rather than form based, database and adheres to prevailing standards for search and open data.
To get achieve its goal, the administration has requested a one-time appropriation of $757,000 to complete an alternative analysis — to review the market, potential costs and mid-level business requirements, said Chris Reynolds, chief of the political reform division at the secretary of state office.
The intent is to then proceed with additional budget requests in following years to complete a solutions analysis, write a request for proposal, enter the procurement process and select a vendor to develop a new data-driven system by 2019, Reynolds said.
The plan is similar to how an IT project would be moved through the Department of Technology, which has revamped its project approval process for state agencies and departments in the hope of ensuring successful IT projects. The Secretary of State, however, wants to run its own project in the interest of speed and minimize the amount of review.
“Part of the reason we could do it faster is that there would not be as much oversight by the Department of Technology,” Kim Gauthier, deputy secretary of state for operations, told lawmakers at a May 5 hearing of the Budget Subcommittee 4 on State Administration and General Government.
That didn’t sit well with several lawmakers on the panel, including chair Sen. Richard Roth, who warned the Secretary of State’s office, “That’s a dangerous position to take,” and he urged deliberation so mistakes aren’t made.
"If you step out on your own outside of the process, then I know exactly who to hold accountable, and I fully intend to do so,” said Roth, D-Riverside.
The concern by lawmakers is justified. Between 1994 and 2013, auditors determined that project IT failures have cost the state $985 million. Among the most well-known troubled projects: the Department of Motor Vehicles’ vehicle registration overhaul, CalPERS’ pension system, the state employee payroll system and, most recently, the Department of Consumer Affairs’ BreEZe system.
Hertzberg encouraged his fellow lawmakers to consider funding the project, citing the urgency for a new system that actually works and adds transparency to government. He said his talks with groups like Code For America have shown him that government encounters so many challenges with IT projects because it constantly tries to mitigate risk by talking to every department possible and piling too much into a deal.
“What we tried to do here with respect to giving flexibility to the secretary of state’s office does run afoul directly with some of the cultures that exist in government,” Hertzberg said.
Hertzberg has asked the Legislature to fund the entire project outright at $13.5 million, giving the Secretary of State the authority to develop the project however he sees fit.
Senators deferred making a decision, holding the item open until after the May budget revise.
