41 Comments - Red Rider - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 12:21 pm: He had 2 years now the sky’s falling! - Saluki - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 12:27 pm: How does this help us get a budget? - Puddintaine - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 12:27 pm: How do you know if your barrage was good? A: secondary effects. Keep concentrating on DoIt, bunch of Ted-Talk do nothing gasbag money leeches. And that kids is the safe for work assessment. - Oswego Willy - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 12:27 pm: Maybe this is what happens when a governor signs a contract, knowing full well he has no budget to pay in the contract, but expects the work done? I read it as this… exactly… this… Bruce Rauner signed a contract that he knew there was no real, direct, honest mechanism to pay without a budget, and now that computer work has happened, Bruce Rauner’s own plan of squeezing the beast, by signing contracts Rauner himself knows he won’t pay… has backfired… and put the whole state’s computing system at risk of hacking. This is collateral damage Rauner has been “fine” with, what Diana Rauner calls “business decisions”… but now, the Rauner’s plan has backfired. That’s real. - Norseman - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 12:28 pm: Focusing on IT update should be a real loser for Rauner. Other than his base, most people care more about the damage to higher education, local services and the loss of services to hundreds of thousands Illinoisans than the updating of computers. If Rauner did his job, we’d be able to address all issues. - wordslinger - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 12:29 pm: –bring more financial transparency and accountability to the State of Illinois.– Is that a gag? You don’t need pinstripe patronage consultants at the trough to see that Illinois is $13B behind on bills for day to day operations. That’s painfully transparent. As far as “accountability,” the buck stops you-know-where, governor. Why is Rauner so sweet on these IT fancy-pants, to the exclusion of everyone else? He doesnt care if any other contractors get paid — what’s their clout? - Langhorne - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 12:33 pm: Let me get this straight–rauners admin fails to adequately supervise a vendor, there is a breach, but its mendozas fault? Got it. Nithing ever is. - illini - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 12:36 pm: Now I understand - this is much more important than making sure that Keana Williams son does not once again have his lifesaving medical device removed because state suppliers are waiting 2 years to be paid. Got it! - A Jack - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 12:37 pm: We do need more transparency considering where Rauner pulls money to pay his deputies. But I doubt if Rauner will be the one to give it to us. - Cook County Commoner - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 12:40 pm: Call me a cynic, but does Illinois leadership really want new tech that would promote “financial transparency and accountability”? Looks to me that they would opt for Uriah Heep and a quill pen if they could get away with it. - Sick & Tired - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 12:54 pm: I can’t believe I feel the need to say this, but I much rather have my personal info at risk just a little longer than have a senior or person with a disability’s well-being put in jeopardy. Priorities, Rauner. Fix them. - thechampaignlife - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 12:54 pm: This is a smart play by Rauner. Only a matter of time before another breach, so easy scapegoatin’ for him to say ‘I told ya so’. I am all for the tech upgrades - they are desperately needed and will pay for themselves in the long run. But we NEED a budget first. - Casual observer - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 12:59 pm: To be clear, the state upgrading its network infrastructure will do nothing to protect vendor networks from being breached. To say it’s urgent for the state to do this because a vendor got hacked is a red herring. - Casual observer - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 1:04 pm: Adding; don’t share sensitive data with vendors unless you are sure they employ stringent data security techniques. - OpenYourEyes - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 1:22 pm: The ERP Project is a drain on money that never ends. Releasing money to that project is like flushing it down the drain. - say what - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 1:23 pm: Most of those findings do not relate to a financial system need, more a need for staff and training along with policies and procedures. With all the money wasted in erp a better use would be in those areas. What will he claim next year when the audit findings will double where erp was implemented? - Skeptic - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 1:36 pm: IIRC Mendoza has maintained all along she would release the funds when justification was provided. So once again, the ball is back in Rauner’s court. - Nero's Fiddle - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 1:37 pm: Regarding wordslinger’s question - “Why is Rauner so sweet on these IT fancy-pants, to the exclusion of everyone else?” The answer is that Rauner sees the complete privatization of all State IT functions (under the “DoIT” banner) as low hanging fruit. Don’t forget that most current DoIT state employees are also AFSCME members. “Rationalizing” IT functions allows Rauner to accomplish all of the following: 1) Move all IT personnel out of the 60 or so state agencies and into DoIT. Each agency will now be dependent on DoIT for all of their IT work. Don’t forget that these individuals have some of the most highly-paid positions in state government, so DoIT’s budget (taken from those 60 agencies) will be in the MULTIPLE BILLIONs per year. 2) By moving these IT personnel, Rauner can now attempt to RETITLE those individuals into titles that are NOT IN THE UNION. AFSCME will fight this, of course, but if he succeeds in his goal of DESTROYING AFSCME, it’s a “done deal”. 3) Once he has all IT personnel out of the union, he will privatize all of those jobs. He’ll tell everyone not to worry because they will get the same deal as the 124 IDOC nurses - they’ll get a job with the new contracting company for half wages and no benefits. - DuPage - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 1:39 pm: @- wordslinger - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 12:29 pm Why is Rauner so sweet on these IT fancy-pants, to the exclusion of everyone else? He doesnt care if any other contractors get paid — what’s their clout? Probably the owners of the companies doing the work are buddies of Rauner’s. I have seen this type of “IT upgrades” numerous times in both public and private sector. Endless cost overruns, goes on for years, does not ever actually work as originally promised, and is deemed “obsolete” before it is finished. Zero accountability. If they try to replace the contractor, critical things are messed up and the new contractor has to re-do a lot of the work. - Last Bull Moose - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 1:46 pm: IT upgrades are needed. The immediate question is whether the ERP project is following the law and rules about how to pay the vendor. A secondary question is whether the project is on track and close to on budget. I think the Senate needs to hold hearings on this. At a minimum the Senators might learn about the importance and complexity of the state computer systems. - Steve Rogers - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 1:48 pm: Serious question. What is gained by calling Mendoza “Madgian’s comptroller”? (typo is his, not mine). I feel like I’m watching a 1st grader throw a daily tantrum because his friend lost the 1st grade student body comptroller job. How does this fix ANY problem we have? - Nero's Fiddle - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 1:52 pm: Regarding OpenYourEyes comment - “The ERP Project is a drain on money that never ends. Releasing money to that project is like flushing it down the drain.” That is so true! If you check the DoIT website you see: “On January 25, 2016, Governor Rauner issued Executive Order 01-16 establishing the Department of Innovation & Technology (DoIT), a new state agency with responsibility for the information technology functions of agencies under the jurisdiction of the Governor.” So what has DoIT accomplished in that time? 1) Hiring lots of high-level managers. 2) Handing out no-bid contracts to contracting companies with terrible records (multiple failed State IT projects), like Deloitte, CSG, etc. 3) Lots of meetings, lots of training, lots of plans. That’s it! How much money have they wasted already? Good question! - Earnest - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 1:59 pm: Choosing this vendor for whom to advocate over human service organizations…sickening. - Nero's Fiddle - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 2:21 pm: As Rauner is fiddling, privatizing State IT functions, the legacy State IT systems (that do the day-to-day business) are burning. About of a third of the current state IT staff are eligible to retire now. Every month, dozens (or hundreds) more are added to their ranks. The remaining IT staff are pulling their hair out because they can’t support all of the current running legacy IT systems without new hires to train - and that is not happening. What the citizens of the state of Illinois may not realize is that when it comes to State IT, we may be facing a “lose/lose” scenario - that is a situation where the current day-to-day IT systems fail and there is nothing to replace them because of the totally dysfunctional way that new “replacement” systems are being “created”. - Chucktownian - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 2:47 pm: There is essentially no difference between Rauner and Trump these days. They both apparently have little or no understanding of their jobs and the constitutions they are supposed to uphold. - Rufus - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 3:35 pm: “IT fancy-pants” is the worst IT consulting corp. in Illinois, if not the U.S. I have worked with them for over 10 years and all they care about is money… and will do anything to get it. None of the projects, which involved many major agencies, worked, ever. WVS, Kid Care, IES, etc. all failures, yet they get paid in full, with lots of change orders (extra money) and they always seem to be at the top of the list when payments are made. They have been sued multiple times when installing ERP systems. These people are corrupt. - OpenYourEyes - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 3:42 pm: The original contract agreed upon for the ERP Project was 250 million. If the Comptroller was to gather all of the outstanding invoices from Deliotte regarding work on this project they will find the total has reached nearly 1 Billion. Yes… 1 Billion. People need to investigate badly and Team Rauner needs to be held accountable. That will never happen though because if the heat gets higher you will see the Superstars of his IT empire start to bail. They will not want it on their resume. - PublicServant - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 5:24 pm: In IT, there is a project truism: Good, Fast, Cheap, Done. Pick 3. - IRLJ - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 6:08 pm: Now, Mendoza has done a better job at responding on message to Rauner’s taunts than any other Democrat. But she has to do it each and every time. The governor’s devotion to attack-pr is constant. So must be the defense. - PublicServant - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 6:16 pm: IRLJ, responding, even if each and every time, is not enough. I’d put a tracker on Rauner and his entourage tallying the price of the planes and vehicles employed to support his Carhartt version 2 show. - illini - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 6:29 pm: @PublicServant - that would be interesting. The true cost of the “Carhartt” constant campaigning for the past 2 years could be massive. But how will we ever know? - Cardsfan - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 7:13 pm: Am I the only one who finds it ironic that in one breath, Rauner is blasting Mendoza for spending $32,000 on a used vehicle, but in the next breath is blasting her for not paying out millions of dollars of tax payer money to a private IT company? We can hope ERP will be more successful than IES, but I doubt it. - Anonymous - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 7:31 pm: DoIT needs help. This doesn’t sound good. http://www.purchase.state.il.us/r.nsf/g?open&d=CE222FD0168C315B862580F3006B65D8 - Anonymous - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 7:39 pm: Who gives a rat’s @ss about upgrades, when kids are going hungry, when they can’t pay for their education as the funding has dried up, as communities can put cops on the street cause there’s no budget….. - Anonymous - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 7:40 pm: wordslinger - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 12:29 pm: He doesnt care if any other contractors get paid — what’s their clout? It’s called family works there! - Rabid - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 8:13 pm: “every executive branch agency the ability to quickly prepare and compleat accurate financial records that the people of the state deserve”. Blaming the turnaround savings numbers on old equipment now? - IT Worker - Thursday, Mar 30, 17 @ 8:47 pm: They always leave out the fact that the ERP system isn’t replacing anything. It’s just another layer of displaying the data. The existing systems still need to run to generate the data. It’s a huge rip off. - Anonymous - Friday, Mar 31, 17 @ 12:09 am: The new DoIT motto: Rauner wants us to DoIT. The citizens of Illinois want us to DoIT. We’ll get paid to DoIT. We’d like to DoIT. We don’t know how to DoIT. Please don’t sue us if we don’t DoIT. - Anonymous - Friday, Mar 31, 17 @ 12:13 am: Just change the acronym “DoIT” to what we all call it - DoLT! - jw - Friday, Mar 31, 17 @ 6:42 am: Could it be that these firms are owned by a trust owned by a certain Bruce. - Generic Drone - Friday, Mar 31, 17 @ 9:44 am: Ha! That Rauner guy. He sure is worried about the condition of the state and it’s citizens! Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.