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CDOT pay system blasted

Tech specialist says agency ignored warnings

April M. Washington And Alan Gathright, Rocky Mountain News

Published March 13, 2007 at midnight

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The Colorado Department of Transportation ignored years of warnings about a new computer system that has stiffed highway workers on overtime pay, a veteran technology specialist said Monday.

Problems with CDOT's $30 million financial management system, plus glitches in other computer conversions and rollouts, have prompted Sen. Peter Groff, D-Denver, to call for a crackdown on computer projects that have plagued the state.

Nearly 200 CDOT workers stormed the Capitol on Friday, complaining that they've been shorted overtime pay earned digging the state out of this winter's blizzards.

The problem is with the SAP computer system, rolled out Nov. 1 by CDOT. Bill Cron, a CDOT information technology specialist, said agency managers ignored two years of warnings about the system, which is designed to track financial and work transactions, from payroll to supply orders to vendor payments. Cron said that when he repeatedly warned supervisors about the "horrible nature of the failure" that was looming, they kicked him off the SAP implementation team in May. He said the system, crafted by Deloitte & Touche, lacked proper testing and quality-assurance review.

Cron said he is skeptical whether the system can be salvaged.

"You're trying to bail water out of the Titanic when it's already at the bottom of the sea," he said.

Former CDOT chief Tom Norton did not return calls for comment Monday. Neither did Deloitte & Touche officials.

Some critics charge that former Gov. Bill Owens left Gov. Bill Ritter with major computer headaches. Ritter's spokesman said it's increasingly clear that recent projects, costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, need immediate attention.

"There are two immediate concerns: One is (that) employees are not being paid what they're owed," Evan Dreyer said. "That is unacceptable. The second is, are we wasting taxpayer money?"

The state's new transportation czar, Russell George, stressed that job one is getting CDOT workers paid on time and marshalling the state's information technology experts to determine if the SAP system can work properly - or if it needs to be abandoned.

Like Ritter, George said the state must do a better job of putting in place efficient, effective computer systems. "Just one after another of these big systems that we have to try to put into place to be state-of-the-art are fraught with trouble and expense," George said.

Sen. Peter Groff, D-Denver, will revive a measure vetoed in 2006 by Owens, to increase oversight of the performance of private vendors with multimillion- dollar state contracts.

"The problem at the Department of Transportation is a part of a long list of computer blunders we're experiencing in the state," Groff said. "What bothers me the most is - of all winters - the way we reward our road crews is not paying them."