Author: mopress

Part One: Weeks 1-9
Privatization, Knowledge Management,
And a Mappable Future Like You Wouldn’t Believe

By Greg Moses

It is the perfect coincidence. The Texas State Employees Union all dressed in black t-shirts and divided up by senate districts are occupying the North plaza of the state capitol as I walk up. Of course, they want a pay raise, and I hope they get a big one. But they also want to explain why it is a bad idea for the state to shut down offices for Health and Human Services (HHS), lay off state workers, and replace the whole network with privately contracted call centers.

As I shuffle through the tall but narrow doors of power in a crush of unionists who are funneling through, I think about the grim trend of privatization and how it touches on the project that I have come to study this afternoon, a $12 million dollar deal with private contractors to build and maintain a statewide voter registration and election management system known as project TEAM (Texas Election Administration Management).

As I type out the results of things that I found while reading 21 weekly reports filed by the Secretary of State’s (SOS) project manager, I’m going to grumble along with the unionists’ mood of anti-privatization. For instance, I wonder why the existing staff and resources of the Texas Voter Registration System were not placed more fully in control of the project to upgrade and extend the system that they had already been running for the state.

For one thing, as we will see, the existing SOS elections division staff is essential to the project. They know the registration system and they are close partners in developing the system. I have never spoken to any of them, but in the circumstances of their work life, I imagine they must feel like many state workers these days who are enlisted to provide the essential expertise needed for high-powered privatization of public functions.

For another thing, just like the private call centers that will be doing state business for HHS, the functions of the election project are entirely public in their significance, and should be open to the usual processes of public accountability. But when private vendors start handling crucial public functions, like social services and elections, lines get drawn in self-contradictory ways. As I come across documentary trails that lead in the direction of IBM or its chief subcontractor in this project Hart InterCivic a significant shift of terrain takes place.

As a journalist I am very much in the habit of picking up the phone, calling public employees, and asking them questions. And as public employees they are generally helpful and responsive. Just a few days ago a fairly well-placed manager in the Texas bureaucracy took down my question, found the answer and called me back in about five minutes time. Are employees of IBM or Hart InterCivic prepared to follow suit?

The question gets stickier the more unfriendlier the reply. For instance, if a public employee refuses to answer questions about public business, there is a structure of appeals, including open records requests. These systems are not always as responsive as they should be, but at least we can press the question of what should be the public’s right to know.

In the case of private contractors who are doing public business, what should be the public’s right to know?

In the hefty contract for the TEAM project, Hart InterCivic holds the state legally liable for guarding its proprietary secrets. No details of the Hart software are to be discussed with or released to the public without prior written approval.

On the one hand, Hart can argue that software developers anywhere have some rights to their private property. Let’s say a software company is licensing spreadsheet software to the state for bookkeeping purposes. Shouldn’t the state respect the property rights of that software? But here’s the rub. In the development and maintenance of election management software, there are nothing but public functions at stake. Why shouldn’t these technologies which will regulate the heart of the voting process be specially reserved for public development by public interests, such as the existing elections division at the SOS?

In the case of this voter database project in Texas, there is some consolation in the fact that the private function has a specific scope and time limit. After Team IBM puts the database system together, the state will operate it, and after four more years of service contracts with Hart InterCivic, the state will have the option to buy back the database system at “fair market value.” So this privatization project is not as grim as others you see around town today, such as the plan to permanently close HHS offices and replace them with contract vendors forever. But we’ll come back to the question later. Now for some facts.

As of April 1 (I don’t pick the dates, I just report them) Team IBM had reported ten thousand billable hours into the database project, or about 27 percent of the total hours that are scheduled. And the state has accepted from them 35 of the “deliverable” items or about 12 percent of the 291 items due by next February, the revised completion date of the project. In return for what the state has received, Team IBM has been paid $220,000 since November, 2004. (Although the report is dated April 1, the number of hours reported is carried over from the March 25 report, so the final April 1 hours will be higher. Stay tuned.)

“The poor start has been corrected,” writes the project manager, “and the project is running much more smoothly.” About that poor start, we’ll soon see what the documents have to say. Shall we start at the beginning?

Way back on Nov. 8, the Monday after the elections, Team IBM was welcomed to the “billable” part of the project. The first thing they asked for was a filing cabinet that locks. The first thing the state asked from Team IBM was a weekly report to be handed in every Tuesday covering the prior week.

Already by this point, Texas was leading other states in the development of its database. The project manager proudly showed off plans in College Station on Nov. 16 to a meeting of County Tax Assessors (who double as voter registrars), held a conference call to share his experience with Arizona, and on Nov. 19 convened the kickoff meeting for the TEAM system.

The trouble began during week three, when IBM delivered its first “deliverable.” Although the file was labeled “Detailed Requirements Specifications” state staff said it was not what they expected to see, and the state’s project manager called the file “incomplete.” And it is here that the knowledge of state staff enters into evidence versus the expertise of a privatized vendor. In exhibit number one, state staff simply had higher expectations than the private sector was delivering. And this is what privatization really feels like, time after time.

As November and December tugged at week four, Team IBM delivered its first deliverable that the state would accept: Deliverable D.1 aka Initial Project Workplan. Not a bad month’s work.

Also during week four, TEAM held its first group organizational meeting and invited a speaker. Cathy Cioffi is overseeing the overhaul of a statewide Crash Records Information System (CRIS). The project weighs in at $14.1 million involving two state agencies (DPS and TxDOT) and a private giant (Northrup Grumman).

A quick google on Cioffi yields an interesting article about Knowledge Management or KM in which Cioffi is quoted as saying, if you want $14 million for something, don’t call it KM: “We could not have gotten funding at the state level for something classified as a KM project,” says CRIS Project Manager Cathy Cioffi. “We had to show the business links–and where the value is–because we’re using taxpayer dollars.”

In an age of privatization Cioffi’s quote is nicely done. If you want to spend public money, focus on the business links. Well, she didn’t invent the times she’s living in, but she does express them very well.

But what if we take Cioffi’s hint that this is really Knowledge Management that we’re talking about? The article by Alice Dragoon at CIO Archives stresses that the way you do KM is incrementally, because folks who don’t know KM won’t support you otherwise. Consider another KM strategist: “He would start with a series of small, discrete KM initiatives that would quickly demonstrate value, then gradually build on those successes, creating a knowledge-enabled organization one layer at a time.”

It’s a great strategy no doubt this layering where one thing at a time you make your whole world datafied. It appeals to my inner geekness, my own database dreams of struggle. But it also whispers a cautionary hint. These data projects that we are funding all around us have a great potential to add up to something. Are we thinking ahead?

In our business oriented public life, no law gets considered for adoption without a fiscal note. This helps lawmakers avoid the mistake of passing a law that on its face has no budget but in consequence will really cost a lot of money. Cioffi’s hint about the politics of Knowledge Management suggests that something like a fiscal note might be considered for KM. If KM projects are going to be sold in our business-oriented world in terms of fiscal efficiency, then how are we going to flag the need for discussing their actual KM implications in public life?

Week five finds our subcontractor in election affairs Hart InterCivic down at the Department of Public Safety, figuring out how best to tap into everything your state troopers have to offer. And this is just the sort of occasion that calls for a growl. What could be more public in function than records kept by your friendly state troopers? At this point, the interface between two very public functions is being funneled into proprietary private software. In the voting system of the future, there will be a real-time interface between voting rolls and criminal records, between voter registration applications and drivers license records. In the meeting between Hart and DPS are we enabling the privatization of interfaces that have nothing but public uses? And what rights do we have to even ask Hart what they might be up to?

Meanwhile during week five our project manager meets with subcontractor GeoDecisions to get oriented on the possibilities of graphical mapping. The project includes mapping because voter information will be mapped to street addresses and street addresses will be mapped to voter precincts. In addition, census data will be overlaid onto precinct maps. Not only will voters have the ability to find out where they should vote, but political strategists will be able to call up reports that show which streets tend to vote in Democratic primaries, with names and addresses attached.

The mapping meeting also raises new issues about the brave new world of data interfacing. Imagine the day coming when Hart InterCivic will sell software that interfaces mapping with state trooper criminal records? Want arrest records by street? Maps of criminal histories?

When Texas hired their project manager, they went and got the guy who wrote a textbook on project management so watch out, he’s into the concept, very much. During week five he sorts through your three basic project categories: Deliverables (the things that can be finished and turned over at a specific point in time); Working Documents (that have to be kept updated and are therefore subject to change and never really finished); and Assumption Items (what you assume to be true about parameters, capabilities, partners, and other forms of reality). And when he’s finished going through all these things, he makes a note: “found 117 items to exchange categories.” I don’t know about you, but that kind of thing makes me go wow, this guy really knows how to KM! Makes you wanna peek at his desktop, too. Or when you move something from assumption to deliverable, what kind of move is that?

Note to self: during week six the project manager goes to Cooper Consulting’s “monthly project managers meeting” on December 14. Now what is Cooper Consulting up to exactly? Please don’t forget to ask. Meanwhile, Team IBM after six weeks work and two deliverables down (I don’t know what the second one is) has logged 2,386 billable hours.

Weeks seven and eight should be holiday weeks for sane people. But right at the beginning TEAM holds a Focus Group meeting for 20 representatives from 12 counties, then the project manager lines up his empty files to be filled later by all the signed docs. That sounds like a reasonable way to work during the holidays. Get your filing system set up for the New Year. I may be WASP, but there are days you have to relax a little.

Week nine is the first week of the New Year. The project manager touches base with the Legislative Budget Board about getting permission to do the computer development in Austin rather than West Texas where all state computer work is supposed to be done in facilities managed by Northrup Grumman.

Do you wonder just a little if IBM and Hart trust Grumman to keep all these proprietary secrets during the coming year? I want to label parts of this paragraph as abject speculation, but while spell checking Northrup Grumman against their website, they informed me that their next generation pilotless killer airplane just took off for a test. Now you put that thing together with a mappable DPS database of troublemakers and you’ll long for the good ol days of tasers I assure you.

On Jan. 7, the project manager reports three new deliverables, places a purchase order, and heads off to South Padre for a conference on election management. It’s good to be king.

series to be continued

But Project Manager Still Predicts Jan. Rollout

By Greg Moses

A project to develop a statewide database for voter registration is running behind schedule, but the state’s manager of the project predicts it will be completed in time to meet a federal deadline of Jan. 1.

“It has taken a little while to get the project on its feet,” says Bob Futrell, who oversees the project for the Texas Secretary of State, “but it’s okay now.”

A mandate to create the Texas Voter Registration/Election Management System (TEAMS) originates in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 which requires all states to have centralized databases by Jan. 1.

“Meeting the January deadline will be a challenge,” said Futrell, speaking by telephone Thursday from his Austin office, “but in my experience these things are always a challenge up front.” Futrell is an expert in the management of software development, holding academic positions at the University of Texas and at Austin Community College. He has also co-authored a textbook in the field.

With an estimated 36,000 hours of work going into the project at an initial cost of $9.5 million, winning bidders IBM and Hart InterCivic promise to deliver a statewide voter registration database, election management, ballot definition, election night reporting, and a jury management system, too.

According to a thick contract that we reviewed earlier this week at the capitol, the state will also pay at least $600,000 per year in Annual Maintenance Fees for five years.

“I can’t stress enough how different this is from an election system,” advised a well-placed source who answered questions about the contract earlier in the week. One way to understand the difference between election system and election management in a Texas context is to contrast the role of the County Clerk who runs the election and the Tax Assessor who manages the voter database.

Hart InterCivic is well known to election activists as the manufacturer of the proprietary eSlate voting terminal and the election system software that goes with it. Election systems take the votes from voters and tabulate them.

The statewide election management system for Texas also begins with proprietary software from Hart InterCivic known as eRegistry. Of the $9.5 million that the state is paying in startup costs for the project, $4.0 million is dedicated to license fees for eRegistry.

“At the time the project began, the Hart software was not fully developed,” says project manager Futrell. “On the one hand, that means there were really a lot of unknowns; on the other hand, we get to shape it.”

A list of about 2,800 detailed requirements for the TEAMS project are nearly ready for approval by the state, says Futrell. That part of the project had been scheduled for approval Feb. 3.

Another significant milestone — a software release known as “Hart One” — is also pending approval. Original plans called for Hart One to be completed by March 15. Futrell says that was the day when Hart provided a URL to access the software, followed in the next several days by a CD, source code to be escrowed, and user manuals. Hart will be paid $975,000 for Hart One when it is finally accepted by the state.

Futrell says the project is still in the first phase or “Prepare Phase” and that the whole project team has recently completed a two-day review of the project. According to early plans, Prepare Phase was scheduled for completion in late January or early February. But Futrell says “unfortunate timing” plays a role in the delays.

In one “unfortunate” conflict, the state had originally scheduled normal work during the November elections of 2004. In another, training of statewide users will fall during the holiday season of 2005.

Futrell predicts the state will close the gap in deadlines during the next two phases of the project, known as “Design” and “Configure” phases. The Design Phase originally scheduled to be completed on April 8 will be pushed back to June 27. But the Configure Phase originally scheduled for completion in mid-December will only be pushed back about a week.

“We still believe that we will have the voter registration part completed in time for the HAVA deadline,” says Futrell. Some of the other election management features may come later.

For some time, the Secretary of State has already been managing voter rolls for 164 counties, says another source with the Secretary of State. HAVA will allow the remaining 90 counties to maintain their own systems, so long as they upload data to the statewide database on a timely basis. The Secretary of State will try to build a system so impressive that all counties will sign up for “real time” service, eliminating themselves as middle managers.

A two-page brochure posted at the Hart website says that eRegistry’s functionality includes:

Voter Registration: Complete Registration Functionality; Validation against Agency Data; Voter Address, Event and Voting Histories; Suppression of Confidential Voter Information; Automated Mass Voter Updates and Mailings; Voter Address; District and Precinct Maintenance; and Redistricting.

Comprehensive Reporting: NVRA reporting; Standard, Ad Hoc, Statistical and Performance-based Reporting.

Election Management: Absentee Balloting n Early Voting; Poll Worker Recruitment, Assignment and Training; Polling Place Management; Poll Book Printing; Candidate Filing; Petition Management; Canvass; Election Results Reporting; Ballot Generation / Definition Capabilities; Public Information Generation, Tracking and Billing.

Imports/Exports in XML Format: Imports agency data and exports voter registration information to other states in XML format for standardized election data exchange.

Imaging: Voter signatures, applications and correspondence; petition pages; poll book pages; voter IDs; provisional ballot applications. Utilizes off-the-shelf scanners.

Automated Processing: Bar Codes for voter correspondence, voting history, updates from poll books, absentee ballot returns, voter sign-in, precinct equipment, supplies, ballot boxes, OCR/ICR for voter application processing

Great care is taken in the Hart portion of the contract to maintain Hart’s ownership, control, and confidentiality over this powerful and comprehensive software technology. The state of Texas, says the contract, “agrees to treat the Source Code and other deposit materials as exceptionally valuable trade secrets.”

For example, the contract prohibits, “adaptation, conversion, reverse engineering, disassembly or de-compilation” of the eRegistry software without Hart’s permission. The state is not even allowed to publish “results of benchmark tests run on the Software” without Hart’s approval. And in the event that Hart determines such results “contain confidential or proprietary information” the contract binds the state to “seek confidential treatment” of the information.

Hart’s intellectual property will include improvements and upgrades made to eRegistry during the contract, but the state has a fifth-year option to buy the whole package “as is” at fair market value.

Part of the complexity of the TEAMS project, says project manager Futrell, is determining which of the 2,800 required functions are already part of the Hart software and which will require customization. Then designers will have to figure out how to “wrap” the custom features around the existing Hart core.

Note: First version posted Mar. 30 with substantial updates following the Futrell interview Mar. 31. The Texas Civil Rights Review has scheduled another contract viewing for the week of Apr. 4.

* * *

Note: following careful review of project documents, this story was corrected on Apr. 17 to reflect that the Hart product of Mar
ch 15 is called “Hart One.”

A Report on the Texas Secretary of State “Listening Tour”

By Greg Moses

Texas Secretary of State Roger Williams calls himself a retail man: “and you’re my customers,” he told the Travis County Commissioners Court on Tuesday morning. Indeed, by the time he’d left the room, you might have wondered if he’d sold them all tickets to a show he improvised while standing on their stage.

The pure political theater that the Secretary brought to Travis County has been repeated at several County Commissioners Courts throughout the state, often with the desired results: next day news in the local paper reporting that the Secretary is working hard and helping out. In order to keep from getting stuck in all the sap, however, you have to pay close attention to the quips. That’s how Gainesville Daily Register reporter Andy Hogue handled the story of the Secretary’s visit to Cooke County.

In Travis County, the role of lead quipster went to County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir who still runs the elections around here. She introduced the Secretary with cheer in her voice, while handing him a Lounge Lizards CD. It was a clever joke after all. The Secretary was on a “listening tour” was he not?

“But I didn’t offer him a flak jacket this time,” said DeBeauvoir in the first telling quip of the day. And without taking another breath she joyously introduced the Secretary to the “nicest, smartest court” he’d ever know.

“I’ll get the flak jacket when I come back,” said the Secretary, in the second telling quip of the day. He explained that his “listening tour” started about thirty days ago, listening to “how some of you converse about HAVA.” That’s the Help American Vote Act, which is either reforming or uprooting voting as we know it in America, and is the only reason why the Secretary of State this year has no choice but to tour the County Commissions.

Williams has been tourning commissions with this same show since at least early March. He calls it a listening tour, but everywhere he goes the pattern is repeated with local papers reporting presentation of “a check” to help purchase new electronic voting machines.

“It’s a federal mandate Judge,” says the Secretary with all the stock inflections that signify political bidness in open court. “And I’m not sure how we like federal mandates.” Travis County Judge Samuel T. Biscoe is African American, so his political life has been pretty much defined by federal mandates on the one hand and those who aren’t sure how they feel about them on the other.

“Come January first the HAVA requirements must be met,” says the Secretary, “and Texas will be a leader, a model in meeting those requirements.” What that means is that by January first, HAVA requires all states to: replace punch cards and levers with electronic systems, have new voting system standards, and implement statewide voter registration.

What the Secretary has been dealing with on his county by county tour is that the new voting system standards haven’t been handed down by the federal government yet, and neither has the cash that was supposed to help with all the replacing. To fix these problems, the Secretary has brought a promise and a promissory note.

The Secretary’s promise is that he will make all the private contractors for voting systems eat the costs of modifying equipment if the federal standards cause further changes. And his promissory note is a nice poster-sized image of a check freshly unwrapped from a Kinko’s/FedEx plastic bag.

Get ready for more quips here, because the big camera-friendly poster of a check is supposed to represent the Secretary’s commitment that all bills incurred by HAVA will be paid by the Secretary in thirty days or less.

“But it’s been more than thirty days!” chuckles the Travis County Clerk. And some folks in the room take this chance to chuckle with her.

“I brought you a check Judge,” says the Secretary trying to stay on message. “And I hope when we present the check, we’ll get our picture taken.”

To which, quips the Judge: “We won’t talk about how long it took to get the check. The check is here.”

Actually, I don’t think the check was there, although the pictures did get taken. According to the press release dated Tuesday from the Secretary’s own office, he wasn’t there to hand over a check. He was there “to discuss ways to facilitate a grant worth over $4.5 million to the county resulting from new federal voting requirements.” If the secretary had actually brought a check, I think his press release would have said so. A plainer reading of facts would suggest that the Secretary had put $4.5 million within thirty days reaching distance, provided that proper procedures are duly followed, etc.

Commissioner Karen Sonleitner had only one question for the Secretary after all the pictures had been taken. She asked him to help pass HB 2759, an election reform bill that would lift the cap on the size of voting precincts. Under current law, a precinct can serve no more than 2,000 voters. HB 2759 will raise the limit to 5,000.

Sonleitner explained that growing precincts get expensive when they require new precincts to be drawn and managed. Tell me about growth said the Secretary. Last week he was in Fort Bend County, which is growing at the rate of one or two new precincts per month. There he was also urged to support larger precincts, reports Stephen Palkot of the Herald-Coaster.

Readers of the Texas Civil Rights Review will recall that voters were pouring into Fort Bend County so fast that last November some of them came back to their old Harris County neighborhoods to vote. Republican lawyers called that fraud. Now we also know that Fort Bend County is under stress to accoomodate all its voters anyway.

As for HB 2759 said the Secretary, “I don’t see any issues against that. It sort of streamlines it.”

Lines that are streaming we can easily visualize here at the Texas Civil Rights Review whenever voting precincts are more than doubled in size. But probably that’s not the kind of streamlining backers of the bill have in mind. So it will be our last quip of the day, we promise.

Note: revised from original Mar. 29 version to include links to earlier reports from the tour–gm.

First Row of First Table Fails to Specify Protected Classes

EEO Report: Working Notes Two

Reading the first Civil Rights audit prepared by the Division of Civil Rights at the Texas Workforce Commission is a hair-pulling screamer. The numbers are that bad. The problem arises from a choice on the part of the new civil rights team to use non-civil rights numbers as a basis for civil rights analysis.

“The Equal Employment Opportunity and Minority Hiring Practices Report” is dated February 2005 and bears a March 8 cover letter to the Governor. The Workforce Commission website says the report was posted online March 15.

And according to explanations given to the Governor, this is the first time the report has been prepared by the Civil Rights division at the Workforce Commission. In previous years, the work had been done by the Texas Commission on Human Rights. But that commission was decommissioned in 2003, although the URL bearing the new reports contains the old TCHR address.

The problem with the latest civil rights report from Texas is that in Row One of the First Table of figures, the Civil Rights Division fails to quantify classes of race and ethnicity that are most pertinent to Texas Civil Rights.

On the challenge of differentiating men from women, the report does its job. Of 10.07 million workers in Texas, 4.495 million are women and 5.575 million are men. As the top row of the first chart says, that’s a workforce that is 44.64 percent female, and 55.36 percent male.

The male female comparisons in the first row of the first chart offer helpful beginnings for anyone interested in civil rights for women. The statewide allocation of administrative positions held by women very closely tracks the percentage of women in the total workforce, which serves as a first case indicator that women are probably getting their fair share of opportunities in that category of employment.

In addition to women there are four other “protected classes” under civil rights law, and we would expect similar statistical treatment for each. They are Hispanics, African Americans, Native Americans, and Asian/Pacific Islanders. Just as row one of table one has given us workable numbers for women, we have a right to expect workable numbers for each of these groups.

And finally, just as the numbers for the protected class of women must be compared to men, so must the numbers for protected races and ethnicities be compared to Caucasian or Anglo populations, too.

But the first row of numbers for the first table of the 2005 Texas civil rights report, is a most deceptive and unhelpful guide. Although the first row purports to offer numbers for Caucasian Americans, African Americans, and Hispanic Americans, in fact the numbers are based on a source that can only give correct numbers for workers of Hispanic origin. And whether these workers are Hispanic Americans, as the Texas chart says, would be difficult to say for sure.

Note: second take on the civil rights report. This one circles in on the real problem, the switch to BLS statistics rather than EEOC. But it’s a little long-winded.