California’s list of failed tech projects just added an agency

While twiddling his thumbs in the powerless office of lieutenant governor 12 years ago, Gavin Newsom wrote a book titled “Citizenville,” touting information technology to improve governance.

California would seem to be the perfect place for governmental technology to be employed, given its seminal role in the global technological revolution.

When the book was published, the state had already launched several major programs to upgrade early generation technology and create new applications. Newsom inherited them when he became governor in 2019.

Sadly, the state’s efforts to incorporate cutting-edge technology have seen mediocre success at best, and in some cases outright failure.

The state’s most ambitious effort, the Financial Information System for California, or FI$Cal for short, has been a poster child for very expensive, much delayed and only partially implemented technology.

Launched in 2005, FI$Cal was to replace multiple outdated systems and become a one-stop application for managing state government finances.

Two decades later, about a billion dollars has been spent and some state agencies have been incorporated into the system, but complete deployment is not scheduled until 2032.

 “The project office will not complete the project by its scheduled end date of June 2022,” a 2022 report from the state auditor’s office declared, citing a lack of staff and other impediments.

“Even when the project office officially declares the project done,” the audit continued, “it will not have implemented all promised functionality, and doing so will likely incur significant expense.

“As we described in our two most recent reports, the project office postponed the development of some features, thus reducing the number of key features the system will have when the project formally ends.”

A followup auditor’s report issued last November found some progress toward completion but noted that some of the state’s “largest and most complex” departments remain to be hooked into the system, “and their transition to FI$Cal must be complete by July 1, 2032.”

The most important chore to be completed is the incorporation of the state’s “book of record,” its official report on financial matters.

FI$Cal is just one of the state’s information technology projects that have proceeded slowly, partially or failed altogether.

The state Judicial Council, which manages the statewide court system, spent more than half a billion dollars on a case management system only to abandon it because no one could make it work.

When local court managers switched back to paper systems after the failure, some tried to bar news organizations from easily accessing records, particularly new lawsuits, but Courthouse News sued and eventually won, forcing the Judicial Council to pay the media outlet $2.9 million for its legal costs.

California now has another agency on its list of technology failures — the State Bar, which licenses lawyers.

Facing a $22.2 million budget deficit, the State Bar decided to cut the expenses of testing would-be attorneys and use a new system of in-person and remote testing via computer. It hired Kaplan Exam Services to devise test questions and Meazure Learning to conduct the exam.

“The result was a disaster for many test takers,” the Los Angeles Times recently wrote. “Some reported they were kicked off the online testing platforms; experienced screens that lagged and displayed error messages; and had proctors who could not answer basic questions. Others raised issues with the multiple-choice test questions, complaining they consisted of nonsense questions, had typos and left out important facts.”

In addition to the technological glitches, there were errors and omissions in the test questions, leading the California Supreme Court to order that the State Bar exams in July be conducted the old way.

And, of course, there is voluminous finger-pointing over who, if anyone, will be held accountable.