De Blasio "Insources" IT Work For New York City

Juan Gonzalez in the Daily News:

Mayor de Blasio is about to end the era of huge technology firms feeding off taxpayers with their legions of $500,000-a-year consultants camped at scores of city agencies for years.

On May 15, de Blasio’s top aides completed months of secret talks with the city’s largest municipal union on a far-reaching new “IT Insourcing” agreement.

First Deputy Mayor Anthony Shorris has committed in that pact, a copy of which the Daily News obtained, to “use city employees for IT work where it will achieve financial savings and improve service delivery, by reducing reliance on external IT consultants.”

City officials expect to save $3.6 million this year through the insourcing plan, but that figure could potentially rise to nearly $100 million over five years, according to the pact’s supporting documents.

De Blasio has thus turned into general policy an effort he began last year, when he took much of the city’s botched upgrade of the 911 system away from private contractors like Northrop Grumman and turned it over to municipal workers.

This signals a major shift by our city away from the “privatizing” or “outsourcing” model that has reigned in urban America for more than 20 years.

“There’s been a bias in too many places at using folks outside the public sector for certain city functions,” Shorris said Thursday. “We want to get away from a reliance on outsourcing things that don’t need to be outsourced.”

Mayor Bloomberg loved outsourcing everything he could - especially IT contracts.

And he defended this outsourcing even after the projects went years over budget or the outside consultants were found to be stealing millions from the city.

Here is part of a column from Adam Lisberg back in 2011 in the DN on that subject:

On his Friday radio show, he was asked about a new shift in city policy that had been in the newspaper for two days running - and didn't seem to know it had happened.

It's a shift on something that had been a sore point for Bloomberg's critics - outside contractors paid six-figure salaries for tech projects that blow deadlines and budgets, like the scandal-ridden CityTime system.

The mayor has long defended his administration's contracting policies, even though municipal unions and Controller John Liu say city workers could do the job for less.

So it was news last week when one of Bloomberg's deputy mayors, Stephen Goldsmith, agreed with critics and said New York will save tens of millions of dollars by bringing the work in-house.

On the radio, WOR-AM host John Gambling tossed Bloomberg a softball about it. But instead of explaining the new company line on insourcing, the mayor defended outsourcing.

"People say, 'Oh, you're spending too much money on outsiders.' If you didn't do that one contract outside, you'd have to have those people permanently on your staff," the mayor said.

"The consultants, they say, 'Oh, they charge a lot more.' Well, because that's the business," he continued. "They don't work all the time, so they have to get paid more. And sometimes they have expertise you don't have in-house."

CityTime, the 911 mess, the NYCDOE scandals (two here and here) the FDNY GPS mess, ARIS, the NYCHA computer mess - the Bloomberg Era incompetence on outsourcing goes on and on.

And yet, Bloomberg's pals in the news media gave him a pass then on this incompetence and they continue to give him a pass today.

Bloomberg was never personally held accountable for these.

It is good to see the current mayor change course and start to use municipal workers for these projects.

Bloomberg Administration Hid 911 System Overruns, Conducted Little Oversight Of Consultants Or Vendors

Juan Gonzalez reports that fiscal genius Mayor Bloomberg oversaw a 911 system overhaul that was $1 billion over budget and ten years delayed.

Gonzlaez also writes that Bloomberg officials hid the cost overruns:

-The overhaul, now scheduled for completion in 2017, has soared in cost by almost $900 million — from $1.3 billion to $2.2 billion.

-More than $200 million of those costs were not previously known because Bloomberg aides buried them in the budgets of other agencies.

-Officials rewrote the monthly reports of 911 project managers or pressured them to “sanitize” and “soften” negative news so as to “to improve the spin” on its progress.

And of course there was no accountability from the Bloomberg administration on the consultants or vendors putting the project together because these weren't lazy city employees working on it, they were heroic private consultants and innovative private vendors:

-Multiple layers of private consultants and vendors virtually ran the overhaul with little supervision from city employees. At times, those consultants ended up marking up their bills to the city as much as 600%.

 -During one 18-month period, City Hall kept cancelling meetings of the interagency city group that was nominally in charge of the project, leading the city’s own quality control consultant, Gartner Group, to complain: “The most senior members of the administration simply failed to pay attention.”

I wrote yesterday that if de Blasio oversaw such a public safety and financial disaster, there would be hell to pay in the media for it.

But really, other than a couple of Juan Gonzalez columns and a few other news items, it seems former Mayor Bloomberg remains the fiscal and management genius he was always depicted as in the media.

Report: Fiscal Genius Mayor Bloomberg Royally Screwed Up 911 Upgrade

Explain to me how Michael Bloomberg continues to be revered as a fiscal genius after CityTime and this mess:

The city’s mammoth upgrade of its antiquated 911 emergency call-taking system was plagued by delays, cost overruns and “persistent mismanagement” under the Michael Bloomberg administration, investigators charged Thursday.

In a 109-page report, the Department of Investigation said failures over nearly a decade, including poor performance and price markups by a number of contractors, drove up the price of the overhaul by hundreds of millions of dollars.

The project, which was launched in 2004 to improve the city’s 911 call infrastructure and create essential backup protections, isn’t expected to be completed until 2017, at a total cost of more than $2 billion.

“[The project] not only is late and over its original budget, but also has tested public confidence in the city’s ability to deliver on necessary improvements to the 911 system that are critical to public safety,” the report says.

It's amazing what billions in your bank account can do for your reputation.

I guarantee you, were de Blasio to have similar scandals like CityTime or the 911 mess, the elites of this city, including the media, would not be so gentle.

Why Are Bloomberg And Klein Still Considered Tech Geniuses?

Harris Lirtzman left this comment on the ARIS post from this morning:

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. 

Another Bloomberg NYCDOE Contractor Fraud Story

Mayor Bloomberg was a self-described financial genius who saved the city from financial ruin numerous times - and yet, the contractors his administration hired robbed the city blind.

Here's the latest:

A contractor for the city Department of Education was busted for allegedly scamming the city for more than $1 million with massive overcharges — including billing the city $572 for circuit breakers that cost a measly 18 bucks.

Derval (Eduardo) Lazzari, 54, also had his companies charge the city $157.50 a pop for over 8,000 non-existent “carbon dioxide” tests on refrigerators, federal prosecutors said.

The Queens man “cheated the New York City Department of Education and the children it educates by submitting fraudulent invoices for repairs to New York City schools,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said.

The criminal complaint said Lazzari had been running the scam since 2006, when his company, Acme American Repairs, was awarded a contract to repair cafeteria equipment in city schools.

“Beginning shortly after the 2006 contract went into effect, Lazzari instructed the billing clerk ‘to bill as close to $1,000 on ever work ticket as possible without going over,’” regardless of what work — if any — was done, the complaint says.

The contract eventually paid the company $22 million, and it was awarded a second deal in 2010, court papers say.

The big bills caught the eye of the Special Commission of Investigation for city schools, which discovered the rampant overbilling, court papers say.

The agency found “Acme repeatedly billed the DOE $572.05 for a circuit breaker estimated to cost $18,” and “repeatedly billed the DOE between $200 and $300 for electrical outlets estimated to cost between $2 and $22,” the complaint says.

The company also billed “for parts or services that were not installed and/or inapplicable to the type of repair and/or service work completed.”

Previous Bloomberg contractor and tech boondoggle stories can be seen here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Previous Bloomberg NYCDOE consultant and tech boondoggle stories can be seen here, here, here and here.

One Final Bloomberg Boondoggle

From the Daily News:

In one of its final acts, the Bloomberg administration pushed through a costly contract to modernize the city's 311 call system — hiring the same company fired by the feds for the botched rollout of the Obamacare website.

The city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, known as DoITT, awarded the contract to the Montreal-based company CGI on Dec. 31, hours before Bill de Blasio was sworn in as mayor.

Bloomberg administration officials were keen on approving the deal because the former mayor sees the 311 hotline as one his legacies, sources said.

But rival companies are up in arms, saying CGI has little if any experience managing call centers. A website, Dont911nyc311.com, has popped up to protest the contract.

CGI has never overhauled “a 311-type system,” said a source in the information technology industry.

“We’re transferring a service New York City provided to its people to a service New York City is contracting to outside parties to do. It’s a serious situation.”

The contract will cost taxpayers $10 million this year — and potentially tens of millions more in future years.

This is the same kind of Bloomberg behavior that brought us the 911 system overhaul - the one that cost over $2 billion dollars, is years behind schedule and still doesn't work right.

Same as the CityTime boondoggle as well.

How the press never went after Bloomberg on the 911 system, the CityTime mess and the other contract boondoggles is beyond me.

You can bet they'll go after de Blasio if he does the same.

But Bloomberg essentially gets a pass - no meme about what an incompetent steward of city contracts he was.

Michael Pollan Knows Nothing About Mayor Bloomberg

.@michaelpollan @paultough NOT a good idea; Bloomberg has been a disaster when it comes to instituting tech systems; witness CityTime
— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) November 24, 2013

Apparently Michael Pollan missed not only the news about CityTime scandal - the worst fraud ever perpetrated against NYC - but also the 911 system overhaul mess that has seen Bloomberg spend over $2 billion dollars in tech upgrades that cause the system to freeze repeatedly and just may have led to the death of a four year old.

Or the EMT records modernization project Bloomberg instituted that the NY Post called a "technical nightmare" that causes the new wifi devices to freeze up and lose information - again putting lives at risk.

Or the NYCHA computer system upgrade that Bloomberg spent $36 million on that Juan Gonzlaez described this way in the Daily News:

Bureaucrats at the New York City Housing Authority gave their new $36 million computerized rent-collection system the bizarre acronym NICE (NYCHA Improving Customer Experience).

But for landlords and public housing tenants, the system — designed by firm Siebel-Oracle — is a cyber-monster run amok.

Since NICE was launched in February, the annual certification process for 100,000 tenants who receive Section 8 rent subsidies has turned into a hellhole of disappeared documents, erroneous payments and baseless eviction notices.

Many of the 30,000 private landlords who get paid by the Housing Authority are up fed up.

“It’s total chaos beyond belief,” said one Brooklyn building owner. “Landlords are being mixed up and getting wrong checks. Sometimes the computer automatically sends termination notices to every tenant in a building. Transfers get held up for months. The whole thing gets worse every day.”

Or how about the GPS systems Bloomberg bought for the FDNY that the NY Times described this way:

The Bloomberg administration spent millions of dollars to put custom-made GPS tracking units in fire and garbage trucks, only to have vehicles inexplicably show up on computer screens as if they had sunk to the bottom of Long Island Sound or New York Harbor, the city comptroller has found.

Faulty devices, inaccurate locations, needless features and prices to make a vendor blush — as much as $56,000 for a single unit in a sanitation truck — characterized the two projects, according to two audits released on Wednesday.

The comptroller, John C. Liu, said the findings were more evidence of the administration’s troubled record with computer projects.

“Once again, millions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted on technology that falls short of what’s promised, raising questions about the oversight of expensive outside consultants,” he said in a statement. Mr. Liu, a likely mayoral candidate, has crusaded against city technology spending on projects like CityTime, the scandal-plagued payroll system.

Last week, the Bloomberg administration acknowledged that it had mismanaged its major information-technology projects and vowed to improve oversight.

And let's not forget the Bloomberg Blizzard Disaster of 2011 that saw Bloomberg telling people to relax and take in a Broadway show as New Yorkers died in this city because Bloomberg was too incompetent to get the streets plowed in a timely fashion.

Or his downplaying of the storm threat pre-Sandy that caused some New Yorkers to take the storm less seriously than they should have.

I'm sick of these "experts" like Pollan pontificating about stuff they know NOTHING about, showing their ignorance in the bargain, and no one calling them on it.

Not that he's going to care, but I'M going to call him on it.

Pollan is an ignoramus if he thinks Bloomberg is some uber-competent techno-genius who should be tapped to fix the Obamacare mess.

This is the kind of statement that calls into question whatever else this guy writes or talks about.

Obama Goes To P-Tech To Find Somebody To Fix Obamacare "Glitches"

Okay, some irony here.

Self-described genius Mike Bloomberg spent $2 billion on a 911 system redo that is so faulty it freezes up sometimes as often as four times a day and just may have contributed to the death of a four year.

Another self-described genius, Barack Obama, has a signature medical program that forces anyone without medical insurance to buy it, except for one big problem - the website doesn't work at all.

These two geniuses came to the vaunted "P-Tech" school in Brooklyn yesterday to brag about all the high techery going on at the school and all I kept thinking in my non-genius brain was, if this school is turning out high tech genius, maybe you geniuses can hire a few of the P-Tech geniuses to fix your faulty 911 system and Obamacare mess.

The Post-Mayoral Propaganda Around Bloomberg Is Starting Already

From the Daily News:

Hizzoner is getting a big honor indeed – a biography.

Simon & Schuster announced Tuesday that outgoing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is getting a “major biography” by way of author Eleanor Randolph, a longtime journalist and editorial board member for the New York Times.

According to the release, the biography will take an intimate look into the “extraordinary career and legacy of Bloomberg, who revolutionized business reporting, who has been a powerful and innovative mayor of New York City for the last 12 years, and who has become a public figure of national significance.”

Gee, that doesn't sound like a puff piece at all.

Oh, no...wait...

It does sound like a puff piece.

Is Eleanor Randolph on the Bloomberg payroll?

Probably not.

Does she want to be on the Bloomberg payroll?

Sure sounds like it from the description of the book.

Bloomberg has tons of of his own journalists on payroll already, from Jonathan Alter to Andrew Kirtzman, who will provide plenty of pro-Bloomberg propaganda in the coming years.

And then we have shills from the NY Times editorial board who look like they're about to add to the pro-Bloomberg propaganda canon.

Will anybody do an independent accounting of the Bloomberg Years?

Will anybody look into the manipulated crime stats?

Or the phonied up graduation rates?

Or how they lied about the test scores?

Or how they lie about emergency response times now?

How about all the scandals - from CityTime to the 911 system that STILL doesn't work and almost killed another person this week to the NYCHA computer mess to the FDNY GPS scandal to the Seedco scandal to the NYCDOE scandals (see here and here) and on and on and on...

And let's not forget the Bloomberg Boxer Day Blizzard disaster, when he couldn't get the streets outside of Manhattan plowed and people died as a result or his downplaying of the seriousness of Sandy prior to Cuomo forcing him to call for an evacuation when the governor shut the MTA down.

So much to scrutinize, but Eleanor Randolph's book doesn't sound like it's going to look into any of that.

Then again, as a member of the NY Times editorial board, she's been responsible for a lot of pro-Bloomberg propaganda in the past, so there's no reason to expect that will change now that the mayor is leaving.

Bloomberg Wasted Millions On 911 System

He tried to hide the waste, mocked an audit that was to look at his vaunted 911 system upgrades - and now we see why:

Less than a year after Mayor Bloomberg derided an audit of the 911 system as “stupid,” his own review revealed poor bookkeeping that resulted in up to $24 million in unnecessary payouts.

The KPMG review, commissioned by the Mayor’s Office of Citywide Emergency Communications, concludes that contractor Hewlett-Packard was overpaid for upgrades of the emergency call system between 2005 and 2012. The mismanagement resulted in as much as $11.5 million in unnecessary payments for 217 invoices and 5,850 time sheets.

The entire cost overrun over seven years was set at $24 million.

The 25-page report was completed last November but not released publicly. It was obtained by the Daily News through a Freedom of Information Law request.

City Controller John Liu, who conducted the audit that the mayor mocked, saw vindication. “This audit very clearly lays out fraudulent billings,” he said.

The errors read like an accountant’s nightmare:

• Hours claimed on Hewlett-Packard invoices were greater than the hours approved in time sheets, costing as much as $4 million.

• Underqualified contractors were paid more than they deserved, projecting to $3.4 million in unnecessary costs.

• Documentation was often unavailable, leaving KPMG unable to determine whether the price tag on services provided was appropriate.

The emergency communications office said it agreed with the KPMG findings, and would “strengthen the invoice review process.”

Liu has for more than a year tangled with Bloomberg over the upgrade of the 911 system, which is overdue and overbudget. During the summer, 911 was prone to crashes.

The full upgrade of the 911 system, initially projected to cost $1.2 billion, has ballooned to more than $2 billion.

Liu, who is running for mayor, claims Hewlett-Packard owes taxpayers $163 million for overbilling uncovered in the audit conducted by his office last year.

Bloomberg last year called Liu’s charges against Hewlett-Packard “intellectually dishonest” and “stupid."Liu’s auditors found Hewlett-Packard charged the city $192 an hour for menial tasks like opening a door for visitors.

$192 an hour to open doors.

Nice work if you can get it.

Gee, how will the city get by without the fiscal genius of Mike Bloomberg?

I have said before, I will say again - if there was ever a truly independent accounting of Bloomberg's time in office here (as opposed to one he pays for or one done by an entity with some ties to either Bloomberg the Man, Bloomberg the Company Or Bloomberg the Philanthropy), they would find the billions wasted in this man's 12 years in office.

They would find all the data has been phonied up - from the crime stats to the emergency response times to the graduation rates and test scores.

Michael Bloomberg the Genius is a fraud - and yet, because he has more money than God, he is feted as a fiscal genius and a municipal visionary and the like.

That's all about the power of his wealth and the fundamental flaw we have in this country whereby we worship money and believe people with it have it because they are smart and innovative.

The truth is, people with Bloomberg's kind of money are cunning and ruthless - that's all.

That's how he's been able to fool people over the last 12 years into believing he has made this city better.

He has not.

He has increased income inequality, he has made the city into a playground for the rich and famous, he has moved poor people to the edges of the city or out of the city (those he terms the "less fortunate") so that he could bring in the "fortunate" (i.e., rich white people.)

He has waged class warfare for the 1% and largely won that war.

Because he is a media mogul and because he is a billionaire, the press do not give him the scrutiny they will almost certainly give to his successor.

But make no mistake, he has been a disaster for this city and the people in it.

Just look at all the privatized public spaces, corporate stores that replaced the mom and pop places, the luxury housing that has replaced whole swaths of the old city and ask yourself if this city is better for the 99% who can either barely afford to live here anymore or cannot afford to live here at all.

"Bloomberg's Baby Sucks!" -- 911 Operators On Bloomberg's New 911 System

 A disturbing piece in the NY Post on just how bad the 911 system that Bloomberg spent $2 billion on is.

Here is that piece in full:

The city’s new $88 million 911 computer system, part of a $2 billion overhaul of the emergency- response system, crashed at least nine times last week and has been plagued with problems since it launched in May. Operators had to record 911 calls with pen and paper, causing delays in getting crucial information to NYPD, FDNY and EMS dispatchers — and getting urgent help to citizens. One experienced 911 call-taker coping with the crisis and other on-the-job problems told her story to The Post’s Susan Edelman.

I’ve been a 911 operator for years. It’s never been as frustrating and stressful as now. If the public only knew what we’re going through.

Getty Images/PhotoAlto

CALL WAITING: Mayor Bloomberg’s $88 million 911 computer system is beset by catastrophic flaws that have operators at wits’ end. 

We’re your lifeline. We’re supposed to send help quickly if you’re having chest pains or getting mugged. With a billion dollars spent on this system, you would expect the top-notch, the best, the state-of-the-art.

It’s not.

“System down!” That’s what they yell when it crashes.

It’s chaos in the call center. Everybody comes running onto the floor, the bigwigs, the commanders, the people from Verizon and Intergraph [the Alabama company that designed the new system].

We stop typing caller information on our computer screens.

They throw slips of paper at you. You have to make sure the information goes in the right spot on the forms. It’s so time-consuming. You have to jot down what the caller tells you, the address verification, the cross streets, the nature of the call, the codes — cardiac, crime in progress, bomb threat.

It’s a lot of writing. There are more calls. People are waiting to get through to 911, but I’m stuck on this call.

Somebody’s dying, and I’m writing on paper.

“We’re holding!” a supervisor shouts. He’s breathing down my neck. “You still on the same call?” They pressure you to move on, but I need more time.

Once I finish, I raise my hand. “I’m ready! Here’s the card!” A runner, an operator on lunch break, picks it up and takes it across the room to the NYPD dispatchers, who send patrol cars over the radio

I take another call.

Each time the system crashes, the operators say, “Bloomberg’s baby sucks! This s--t went down again!”

Our call volume is too high for this system. It’s a very slow system, even when it’s working right. The old computer system was much faster. I wish we could go back.

Crazy things happen with this system. I’ve taken calls where the information disappears — everything you’ve typed is gone. You’re ready to send the call to the dispatcher, and the screen goes blank — everything is gone.

“Where’s the job number? I’m still waiting on the job number,” an EMS dispatcher asks me. All my information on a medical call will pop up once he gets the job number.

“You have the job number on the screen,” I tell him.

“I don’t see it; check your queue.”

“I don’t have it. If I had it, I’d give it to you.”

Then the job number pops up on my screen two to three minutes later. It just appears out of nowhere.

Intergraph keeps telling us, “Shut your computer down and reboot. It’ll just take a minute.”

How many lives can you lose in a minute?

Sometimes we get it wrong, too. Once the address an operator thought she heard was for the wrong borough. A baby wasn’t breathing. The baby died.

Every day I worry about making a terrible mistake like this.

The calls keep coming in. “My husband’s dying of a heart attack.” “My child can’t breathe.” “Someone got shot.”

My job is to get the address first, then verify the cross streets and the nature of the call: “What is your emergency?” I immediately send it over to the NYPD or FDNY. If medical attention is needed, I notify EMS. I have to stay on the line until the dispatcher verifies the address.

“Help is on the way.” That’s what we must tell all callers for priority jobs, like a rescue, cardiac, shooting or robbery in progress. “Help is on the way.” If we don’t use that slogan, we get reprimanded or lose vacation time.

They give rookie operators two months training, and after that just throw ’em in. They’re not ready. It’s a revolving door. The new ones come in, and some say it’s too much and leave.

Starting pay for a 911 operator is about $26,000. There is money to be made on overtime. I know a lady, known as “the queen of OT,” who made up to $80,000. She put her daughter through college.

Now we’re forced to do overtime because we don’t have enough people. Since Mother’s Day, we have to work mandatory double shifts three or four times a week. Some operators call in sick after two tours. We get two 15-minute breaks and an hour meal each shift.

The only way out of a second shift is to bring in a doctor’s note. After a regular shift, I’d have to find an emergency room to say I’m not well.

After 16 hours, it’s unsanitary. No family time. We need back-up babysitters for our babysitters. We’re too exhausted to do anything after work.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my job. I’m here to serve people and do my best. But the conditions are inhumane. We’re burned out.

We had better hope there's not another Sandy or Bloomberg Boxer Day Blizzard or, God forbid, terrorist attack in this city before somebody comes in and fixes this 911 system mess.

And since Bloomberg says it's working swimmingly, he's not going to be the guy who fixes this mess.

NYC 911 System In Shambles, Bloomberg Says All Is Well

A Daily News op-ed today:

After insisting the main flaw in the city’s new 911 emergency call system was with the people who dispatched responders, City Hall’s top man on the project admitted that there had been technical glitches.

But they had all been ironed out, Deputy Mayor for Operations Cas Holloway said on a July 9 visit to the Daily News.

It sure sounded good.

Among the issues that had been resolved, Holloway said, were freeze-ups in the computer link between call-takers and EMS dispatchers.

Those had begun soon after the city switched over on May 29 to a system that linked a single team of dispatchers to disparate police, fire and EMS operations.

First, several dozen dispatch screens froze at once. Not knowing what was happening and fearful that the entire 911 system could go offline, managers shut automated routers and took out pens and paper.
While technicians rebooted the computers, operators wrote information on slips of paper and runners raced the slips to dispatchers. It took 18 minutes to get the system working again.

A few days later, when about 50 screens froze, the managers shut down for a reboot and relied on runners and slips for 52 minutes. Combining both outages, the runners and slips sent out about 860 ambulance runs.

The technicians then did what technicians do, Holloway said, and all was well.

“It will be an anomaly indeed when you go to slips going forward,” he said.

Welcome to anomaly central.

On Monday, the system crashed multiple times and technicians took it offline several more times during the week for a total of 90 minutes. Dispatchers recorded almost 500 calls using runners and slips. Not to worry.

In a statement issued Thursday, the Fire Department reported that the techies had finally figured things out. The system had been “fully stabilized,” the statement said, adding, “The problem was caused by corrupted ‘disk arrays.’ ” Oh, that.

Enough of good-sounding assurances. This is deadly serious. The response system’s troubles have extended well beyond electronic errors.

Staffing is in such turmoil that the NYPD will add 150 civilian dispatchers and is considering assigning 300 uniformed cops to dispatch duty. Also, the Department of Investigation is studying the unexplained 4-minute delay in getting an ambulance to Ariel Russo, when the child lay fatally injured after being hit by an SUV.

Asked time and again, The News’ question remains: How safe are we?

Mayor Bloomberg yesterday:

New York City is lucky it got ripped off hundreds of millions of dollars in the CityTime scandal, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said this morning.

Mr. Bloomberg’s argument was that because the fraudsters agreed to pay the city back $500 million after being hounded by federal prosecutors and the city’s Department of Investigation, the project of modernizing the municipal payroll system ended up being a bargain.

“That whole system cost us something like only a 100 million dollars and it should have been many times that,” he said. “We were lucky because of the fraud. And in the end it turned out, because of the recovery, we saved a lot of money.”

The mayor arrived at this topic after defending the city’s much-maligned 911 system, which has been barraged with reports of dysfunction and shutdowns. Mr. Bloomberg compared the two cases and maintained the system was working just fine.

“When was the last time you heard a complaint about the basic accounting system for the municipal workforce that has something like two thirds of all municipal workers on it? None one. Not one complaint,” he said, latter adding, “It certainly works and this 9/11 system certainly works as well. Will there be glitches? Computer systems all the time have glitches. Nothing’s perfect.”

 Feeling safe yet?

Bloomberg: We're Lucky The CityTime Crooks Ripped Us Off!

Yeah, he said it:

New York City is lucky it got ripped off hundreds of millions of dollars in the CityTime scandal, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said this morning.

Mr. Bloomberg’s argument was that because the fraudsters agreed to pay the city back $500 million after being hounded by federal prosecutors and the city’s Department of Investigation, the project of modernizing the municipal payroll system ended up being a bargain.

“That whole system cost us something like only a 100 million dollars and it should have been many times that,” he said. “We were lucky because of the fraud. And in the end it turned out, because of the recovery, we saved a lot of money.”

The mayor arrived at this topic after defending the city’s much-maligned 911 system, which has been barraged with reports of dysfunction and shutdowns. Mr. Bloomberg compared the two cases and maintained the system was working just fine.

“When was the last time you heard a complaint about the basic accounting system for the municipal workforce that has something like two thirds of all municipal workers on it? None one. Not one complaint,” he said, latter adding, “It certainly works and this 9/11 system certainly works as well. Will there be glitches? Computer systems all the time have glitches. Nothing’s perfect.”

A little 4 year old girl died during one of those 911 system "glitches".

Bloomberg's response?

Oh, well - what can you do?  Nothing's perfect...shit happens...

I'm sure he believes his own b.s. here that the CityTime fraud was awesome because it ended up saving the city money and the new 911 system is working swimmingly despite the half dozen crashes a day it's been having and the dead 4 year old who just might have been saved had the system worked like it was supposed to work.

He's clearly delusional and divorced from reality at this point in his life and I wouldn't be surprised to see him diagnosed with some kind of disorder or dementia in the coming years.

Bloomberg's Vaunted New 911 System Crashed Twice More Yesterday

The 911 system crashed twice yesterday after crashing six times on Monday:

Another day, another failure.

The city’s beleaguered ambulance-response system crashed twice yesterday while computer geeks tried to diagnose the glitch that continues to snarl the system.

Dispatchers were forced to go back to using pen and paper to take down calls and using radios to dispatch ambulances.

The EMS CAD system first went down at about 3:30 a.m. yesterday, Fire Department sources said. EMS dispatchers received 23 calls during the five-minute outage.

Then, around 8 a.m., the system went on the fritz yet again, prompting computer techs to stop the diagnostic procedure.

During that period, dispatchers took down jobs from 55 callers.

“This EMS CAD System is 30 years old and has intermittently experienced interruptions,” the FDNY said in a statement. “A backup protocol for manual dispatch is in place to ensure all EMS calls are responded to, and the replacement of the old system is currently under way as part of the 911 overhaul.”

Israel Miranda, the president of FDNY Local 2507, thinks the issue is related to the new ICAD system that rolled out two months ago.

“The system continues to collapse. They continue to blame it on the EMS CAD because it’s old. We never had these problems before until they put in this new ICAD system,” he said.

Emblematic of Bloomberg - replace an older system that works with a very expensive, high tech replacement that doesn't work as billed (or work at all), then blame the old system and/or the city workers using that system.

If Bill Keller and the rest of the suck up press would get their heads out of Bloomberg's ass for long enough to look around them, they might add these failures to their Bloomberg "legacy pieces" they've been writing lately - along with CityTime, the Bloomberg Boxer Day Blizzard, the FDNY GPS fiasco, the NYCHA computer system disaster, etc.

But it's hard for these "journalists" to tell the truth about our oligarch's "legacy" when he's rumored to be in the market for the NY Times to add to his stable of media properties and they just might have to work for him in the near future.

When Will Bloomberg Be Held Accountable For Failed 911 System?

Another 911 system "glitch" yesterday:

In the midst of a chaotic day of repeated 911 glitches, an EMS system reboot and a temporary return to pen and paper, it took more than an hour to get an ambulance to a 96-year-old Queens, N.Y., woman.

Too bad someone close to Irene Boylan didn’t have the cell phone numbers for New York's police and fire commissioners.

A relative pushed his way into Boylan’s room at the Calvary Baptist Church Senior Houses in Jamaica just after 1 p.m. on Monday and found the woman facedown between two beds. A staff member called 911 at 1:17 p.m. to request an ambulance for the woman, who fell and “was unable to get up,” records show.

But an ambulance didn’t arrive until 2:27 p.m., a wait of an hour and 10 minutes.
 
“How would they feel if it was their mother lying on the floor?” said Doris Crutch, 71, the wife of Boylan’s nephew. “What if it was their wife, their mother, their grandmother, their sister?”

Last week, there was a 33-minute delay in getting an ambulance to an intern who collapsed before an event with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Quinn called Fire Commissioner Salvatore Cassano and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly on their cell phones before the job was upgraded to a priority.

The furious family member pointed a finger at the city’s troubled emergency call system.“We’re hearing it was a problem with the 911 system,” Crutch said. “If that’s a problem, they need to do something about it.”

Bloomberg was off river rafting with Governor Cuomo and could not be reached for comment.

We had all better hope that nothing major happens in the next six months before we (I hope!) get another mayor in City Hall who will fix this mess that Bloomberg created and refuses to acknowledge.

 

God help us if we have anything like Sandy or worse in that time before the next mayor comes in and fixes this system.

 

The 911 call system cannot handle a normal Monday in July.

 

You can imagine what would happen if there was a serious emergency with tens of thousands of calls all coming in at the same time. 

 

Finally, I'll ask one more time:

 

When does Bloomberg get held accountable for this mess?

 

When do the members of the elite corporate press stop sucking up to Bloomberg and hold him accountable for this?

 

Can you imagine if such a thing like this were happening under Dinkins?

 

What would Bill Keller be saying about that?

NYC 911 System Crashes Four Times Today

Another nightmare day for emergency workers in NYC:

The city’s problem-plagued emergency 911 system failed four times today, forcing FDNY dispatchers to resort to pen and paper to scribble down calls and then radio the information out to ambulances.

Fire officials said the first glitch — caused by old computer software that froze the EMS system — lasted nearly a half-hour, from 7:42 to 8:10 a.m.

The second shut-down in the computers — which, when operating properly, are designed to save precious time in life-and-death situations — lasted about 5 minutes.

An FDNY official couldn’t immediately say when the second incident occurred, nor the time or duration of the third and fourth snafus. They only said the total time down was around 45 minutes.

The department spokeswoman Elisheva Zakheim, said 100 calls came in during the first shut-down.

...

Sources said the problem software is old and set to be replaced in 2015. They said it is not part of the $88 million system put into place in May at the city's general 911 call-intake center. That system is known as CAD, for Computer Assisted Dispatch.

Instead, it involves the older ambulance-dispatch system used by FDNY EMS workers, who receive calls from the intake center.

The Police Department's system was not affected by the glitches, sources said.

CAD itself has had its own share of problems right from the start, experiencing several shutdowns since it went online May 29. It is part of an overall $2 billion project pushed by Mayor Bloomberg to revamp the city’s entire emergency-response system.

I love to read suck up "legacy" columns from corporate whore journalists like Bill Keller wondering how the next mayor will be able to follow in the footsteps of the uber-competent Mayor Bloomberg.

12 years, over $2 billion dollars and the 911 system still does not work.

Yeah, that kind of "competence" is going to be so hard to follow.

More 911/EMT Problems Caused By A Bloomberg Technology Upgrade

Bloomberg loves upgrading technology, though many of his upgrades don't work - from the NYCHA computer system to CityTime to the 911 system.

Now here's another Bloomberg technology boondoogle

A move to modernize city ambulance records has become a technical nightmare for city EMTs, who told The Post the system is leading to delays and slower response times.

The new tablet-computer-based system for recording ambulance calls has been hampered because the devices often freeze up and can’t send information when a Wi-Fi signal is unavailable, sources said.
“It’s a very weak wireless system, but the city got what they paid for,” groused one technician. “They were too cheap to pay for a stronger system.”

Instead of recording vital information about each “aided” case on paper, EMS technicians are required to enter data on the tablet. A wireless router is attached to the EMS truck and provides the Wi-Fi signal.

But when a signal can’t be found, or is weak, the ambulance crews struggle to submit the data, which is mandatory before heading off for new emergency calls.

“It’s like a cellphone,” an EMS source said. “Sometimes you lose your signal, and when that happens, you lose your information.”

One EMT recalled how he and his partner ran into tablet trouble after taking a patient suffering chest pains to Jamaica Hospital this week.

They could not move to the next call before his information was in the tablet — but the gadget was not cooperating.

“My partner was working in the ER attempting to put the info into the tablet and he lost the signal. He had to go back and re- enter the info into the tablet.

“That’s why we were extended. It delayed us big time. It took us 40 minutes from the time we got there to the time we left,” he said.

EMTs are expected to have the patient-information process completed in 20 to 25 minutes, he said.

The switch to the rugged five-pound tablets — manufactured by DRS Technologies — was announced in March and introduced at different times around the city.

Queens EMS units began using the tablets on July 8, but they had been introduced earlier — and drew complaints — in Brooklyn and on Staten Island.

The Brooklyn EMS units said the tablets have no keypads, so information has to be entered with a stylus one letter at a time, causing further delays.

 We had better hope there's not another Sandy-type disaster in this city before Bloomberg goes, because the 911 system and the EMT system is not going to be able to handle it.

As I asked in an earlier piece, will this kind of Bloomberg tech boondoggle be showing up in any of the"Bloomberg legacy" pieces corporate suck up journalists like Bill Keller have been writing?

Firefighters Union To Sue City Over Bloomberg's Unworkable 911 System

From the NY Post:

The firefighters union plans to sue City Hall to get rid of the new centralized 911 call system, which it says has created dangerous delays, including in the response to a serious Bronx fire yesterday.

The Uniformed Firefighters Association is claiming that a 911 call for the five-alarm blaze came in at 2:40 a.m. and, because of human error, was not relayed to the FDNY until 2:48 a.m.

When units arrived at 2:52 a.m., the blaze at 1507 Commonwealth Ave. was already raging. The fire left 25 people homeless, injured 11 firefighters and left two kidsen suffering from smoke inhalation.
The reason that this fire got out of control is that when we got there, it was already out of control,” union President Steve Cassidy said.

“It was an eight-minute and 22- second delay in the 911 dispatchers handing this off to the Fire Department.”

Cassidy said the union will seek an injunction to go back to the pre-2009 system.

Currently, callers to 911 speak to an operator, who takes down the circumstances and their address before transferring them to an FDNY dispatcher. Under the old system, as soon as callers to 911 said their was a fire, they were transferred to an FDNY dispatcher before their name and address were taken.

Cassidy said the old system reduces the risk of computer error or having an operator misinterpret the caller’s information.

The Bloomberg administration said everything worked fine, there were no delays and the new 911 system is the bestest thing ever.

Let me know when Bill Keller adds this mess to his "Bloomberg's legacy" columns.

Will Quinn Give Bloomberg's 911 System Boondoggle Some Scrutiny?

After it took an ambulance thirty three minutes to arrive on scene where a seventeen year old had passed out from the heat, Christine Quinn asked the following:

“Over a half an hour for an ambulance to get to a place where a young girl had fainted, was lying on the street, where four TV cameras, at least, the speaker of the City Council and a councilmember raises a great question – how long it yet takes an ambulance to get anywhere else where there aren’t television [cameras] and aren’t two elected officials?” Ms. Quinn told reporters, according to the Daily News.

“I don’t know what in god’s name could have taken so long to get this ambulance to help this young girl but you can rest assured I am going to find out because it’s just not acceptable,” she continued, according to Yahoo.

Speaker Quinn has the power to get the answers to the question of just why 911 calls aren't being answered in NYC anymore.

Here's hoping Quinn is true to her word and finds out.

Mayor Bloomberg may think everything is going swimmingly with his vaunted new 911 system and the corporate press may be too busy writing suck up Bloomberg "legacy pieces" to actually notice that 911 calls don't get answered anymore.

But Quinn can get these answers if she puts the spotlight on this issue.

Again, here's hoping she does before we have some big tragedy a la Bloomberg Boxer Day Blizzard.

Why Aren't 911 Calls Answered In NYC Anymore?

From the Daily News:

An intern for City Councilwoman Diana Reyna waited about 30 minutes for an ambulance Tuesday — after the teen passed out during a press conference with Council Speaker Christine Quinn in Brooklyn.

Quinn was speaking before cameras about the reopening of the controversial E. 91st St. marine transfer station when the 17-year-old girl suddenly dropped to the ground in front of the crowd shortly before noon, witnesses said.

...

 

They quickly pulled the girl into the shade under a tent as Quinn's security guard grabbed an oxygen tank to help the teen breathe.

But Quinn finally lost her patience after waiting about 30 minutes for an ambulance to arrive and dialed NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly for help.

Quinn's calling Kelly finally got an FDNY truck and ambulance to the scene.

Remember the old days, when 911 calls used to get answered in a timely fashion?

I do - bu not in Mike Bloomberg's New York.

You want an ambulance?

Better have Ray Kelly's private number or your out of luck.