I thought you and your readers might be interested in an article I wrote on Schoolbook on Jan. 28 in the long, painful lead-up to the contract negotiations called "Cut Waste at Education Department Before Negotiating Teachers Contract."
One could put any number of the technology and organizational and procurement boondoggles from the Bloomberg Era in any order of waste, perversity or simple ineffectiveness: my top candidates were SESIS (the "Special Education Student Information System"), your very own beloved ARIS, failure to collect hundreds of millions in federal and state reimbursements to the City for providing "related services" to students with disabilities because the DOE has no effective way to capture the information that would support the claims, stopping non-competitive contracts and procurements to "DOE-friendly" organizations and reforming or eliminating the failed and expensive school network systems.
I have always found it remarkable that the man who was responsible for building one of the most successful financial technology companies in the world could not get a single effective technology system build during his time in the City-- ARIS, SESIS, City-Time, Enhanced 911--but yet he and Joel Klein were lionized as visionaries and effective managers by many who wanted to believe.
ARIS we hardly knew ye but we're so glad to see you go.
http://www.wnyc.org/story/opinion-cut-waste-coming-table-over-teachers-contract/
I would add the NYCHA computer system, the FDNY and Sanitation Department GPS systems, and the EMT tablets to the list of Bloomberg tech boondoggles that Harris lists (SESIS, ARIS, CityTime and the 911 system.)
Let us imagine Mayor de Blasio had even a tenth of the failure that Bloomberg had with these boondoggles.
Can you imagine the press coverage?
And yet, Bloomberg has never been personally called to account for the billions of dollars of taxpayer money he lit on fire for these projects.
you are forgetting this scandal:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/alleged-fraud-future-technology-associates-millions-baby-article-1.952326
http://www.nycsci.org/reports/09-11%20FTA%20Report%20letter.pdf
http://www.classsizematters.org/nyc-council-testimony-on-nyc-does-wasteful-and-corrupt-technology-contracts/
and most shockingly, the person in charge of awarding corrupt contracts to her lover was only fined $1000 despite the city being overcharged by millions: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/education-department-finance-boss-fined-1g-giving-tips-lover-article-1.1772591
Yes, the Judith Hederman scandal. I did forget about that one, Leonie. And I blogged that one more than a few times. How she never went to prison, I dunno.
DeleteOf course there was also the Willard Lanham/NYCDOE scandal too:
http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/2011/04/project-corrupt-at-nycdoe.html
That one was small change - just $3.6 million stolen.
And because Lanham wasn't connected to the powers that be, he went to prison.
They are geniuses at wasteful tech spending. They are not tech geniuses.
ReplyDeleteThat the Fun Size Mayor was able to use a combination of wealth-awe and a crest of white ethnic xenophobia to "serve" two "legitimate" and one clearly bought and paid for illegal third term and the BS $1 a year salary and I'll stay in my own place promises he made as a loss leader to gain entree to the skimning feast tgat is the letting of city contracts, in this case, egegiously cronyistically so is a sad commentary on the political system and intelligence of NYC vote.Again with Bhara long ago being bought and paid for, we will have to wait for his departure and the inevitable opening of a few more mouths before this mess begins to be really exposed.Meanwhile , the taxes and fees city residents have to pay as a redult of this plunder of the municipal fisc continue unabated...
ReplyDeleteJust saw this. Thanks for the shout-out, RBE.
ReplyDelete