A new computer system at The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing has contributed to a filing backlog of complaints, according to a report by The Sacramento Bee.
Implemented last year, the HoudiniEsq system was intended to automate the process for those who filed complaints about job or housing discrimination.
But investigators at Fair Employment and Housing complained the off-the-shelf, case-management software was developed for lawyers, not state investigators.
"It was never made for us, you could tell," former Fair Employment and Housing investigator Ernie Herrera, who recently retired, told The Sacramento Bee. "It was made for lawyers. It asked us about minutes and billable hours, for example, things that we don’t do."
The state paid $738,000 for HoudiniEsq, which was manufactured by North Carolina-based company Logic Bit Software LLC. California launched the software July 30, 2012, and the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) began noticing problems the following September.
Working around the system and dealing with glitches slowed down work. For the year ending June 30, 2013, just 10 percent of the 466 residential discrimination cases closed by the Fair Employment and Housing were completed within the federal government’s 100-day guideline, down from 37 percent in 2011-12. The federal government’s goal is that half of the cases be investigated and closed within that time.
Adding to he inefficiency woes, the state launched an online filing feature that resulted in a record 24,000 discrimination complaints in 2012-13. The previous high was 20,000 complaints.
Fair and Employment and Housing Director Phyllis Cheng acknowledged adapting to the new system had been challenging, but she said a change was needed before the old system fell apart. She said efficiency with Houdini had begun to improve.
"I feel for them," Cheng told The Sacramento Bee, regarding the employees and their complaints. "Furloughs, hiring freezes, all while starting the new system. It was so much."
In an April assessment of the system, HUD found that the process "does not provide the types of detailed case activity notes that the former system provided," and nearly a quarter of cases closed between July 2012 and February 2013 "were either incomplete or inaccurate."
The growing pains of using the new system could be ending. New employees have been hired to replace the nearly 50 individuals who have left the Fair Employment and Housing Department in the past six years, and HUD this month complimented the department for a 600 percent increase in case closures between August and September.
