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Lawmakers looking to avoid more computer nightmares

Alan Gathright, Rocky Mountain News

Published April 30, 2007 at midnight

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Lawmakers hope to halt the multimillion-dollar fiascoes plaguing state computer projects with a bill to strengthen government technology expertise and oversight.

Senate Bill 254 abolishes the Colorado Commission on Information Management, comprised of lawmakers, private- sector experts and department heads.

Instead, the Governor's Office of Innovation and Technology would take responsibility for centralized planning and streamlining of new technology projects with a panel of tech specialists and department heads drawing on outside experts.

The bill has passed the Senate and was unanimously endorsed Friday by the House State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee.

The idea is for the governor's respected Chief Information Officer Michael Locatis to forge better collaboration and expertise-sharing among information technology teams now scattered across 20 state agencies, said Rep. Bernie Buescher, D-Grand Junction.

Buescher is sponsoring the bill with Sen. Ron May, R-Colorado Springs.

An executive with strong private- and public-sector IT expertise, Locatis won praise as Denver's technology czar for forging the city's fragmented technology offices into a strong team.

"This is an effort to say: Let's get our very best minds together. Let's concentrate our effort," Buescher said. "Let's make sure that when we do a new technology program that it's not just driven from within one department."

Clearly, the goal is to avoid perpetuating a series of flubbed computer system rollouts that began during the administration of former Republican Gov. Bill Owens and still haunt state government with cost and deadline over-runs and a failure to perform as advertised.

They range from the disastrous $212 million welfare benefit system to a $30 million computerized financial-management system that crippled the state highway agency's ability to pay workers and vendors.

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