NC - Durham, NC to Sue Orlando, FL, High-Tech Firm Over Police Laptops

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Title: Durham, N.C., to Sue Orlando, Fla., High-Tech Firm over Police Laptops

Story Filed: Tuesday, April 04, 2000 3:44 PM EST

Apr. 4 (The Orlando Sentinel/KRTBN)--Already facing a $5 million judgment in one case, Lake Mary high-tech company HTE Inc. has landed in another dispute over alleged defects in its software systems.

The city of Durham, N.C., said Monday that HTE violated a $1 million contract by delivering faulty law-enforcement computer systems.

After 2 1/2 years of wrestling with HTE over the deal, Durham said it will take legal action because at least two deadlines have come and gone with defects still remaining in almost 100 police laptop computers.

The city has already filed a default notice to claim a $950,000 performance surety bond that HTE filed in 1997, said John Pedersen, Durham's assistant city manager. The suit may be filed in several weeks.

"We are giving them a chance to satisfactorily complete the contract, if they can, before the suit is actually filed," Pedersen said.

HTE officials said they still hope matters can be resolved without litigation.

"The city has been very patient, and we're doing everything we can to fulfill our contract with them," said Brian Heafy, HTE vice president. "We have our folks there this week working intensely to resolve the issues. We'll continue to press ahead and hopefully we can mitigate any action that would be negative."

Originally, HTE's computer system was supposed to dispatch officers to a crime scene and enable them to do criminal background checks and file reports -- all on laptops in their vehicles.

Only the dispatch function works, Durham officials said. Technical problems have blocked the laptops from transmitting reports and connecting to the state's criminal information database, they said.

The Durham case is the latest woe for HTE, formerly one of the fastest-growing high-tech companies in Central Florida.

Losses, litigation and poor sales in 1999 left the company in disarray. HTE posted a $15 million loss for the year. In August, founder Dennis Harward was forced to resign amid a shakeup in top management.

New Chief Executive Joe Loughry Jr. took over in January, just as the company lost its appeal of a $5 million judgment in a case in which Tacoma, Wash., accused HTE of selling software that wasn't Y2K-compliant.

Pledging to turn the company around, Loughry promised a renewed focus on customer satisfaction and support.

In the Durham situation, city officials said HTE's support has increased noticeably since Loughry's arrival.

"It certainly is at a level above what we had witnessed before," Pedersen said. "HTE has committed the resources and made an honest effort to fix the problems.

"We understand they've been through a management shakeup, and in fairness, they do face a difficult task at this point because the project is so far behind. But we felt we needed to move forward and use every means available to us to make sure what we paid for is delivered."

By Richard Burnett

(c) 2000, The Orlando Sentinel, Fla. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

http://library.northernlight.com/FC20000404320000367.html?cb=0&dx=2006&sc=0#doc

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-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), April 04, 2000

Answers

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City prepares to sue over laptop computers for police squad cars By RAH BICKLEY, Staff Writer April 4, 2000

DURHAM -- The city is moving to sue the supplier of its police- car laptop computers, which have never worked, Assistant City Manager John Pedersen said Monday.

City Manager Lamont Ewell notified the supplier's agent of the lawsuit by letter on Monday. But the supplier, HTE Corp. of Lake Mary, Fla., still has a chance to avoid legal action. It will take the city about two weeks to file the suit, and if HTE can fix the problems in the meantime, it will be off the hook. But that's unlikely, city officials say. "Surely, if we can get satisfaction prior to actually filing a lawsuit, we will," said Assistant City Attorney Sherri Zann Rosenthal, who is helping prepare the suit. "But we're not going to hold our breath given the history on this contract."

The city paid $947,637 more than two years ago for 95 laptop computers for police cruisers. They were supposed to dispatch 911 calls and send messages to officers, access criminal and driving records and allow officers to write crime reports. Two of the three features have never worked, and HTE has missed several deadlines to fix the problems. Ewell has acknowledged the city made a mistake before he was city manager in paying the entire amount up front.

HTE told Durham officials Friday that it had fixed the problems, but the staff has yet to see a demonstration that would prove it, Pedersen said. The laptops' dispatch feature works. But the machines have never been able to pull up state crime and driving records because the software doesn't jibe with that of the State Bureau of Investigation, which supplies the records. The feature that allows police officers to write crime reports has never worked because the software is obsolete. To upgrade it would require more memory than the laptops have.

By Monday, HTE was saying the laptops could be upgraded to the necessary amount of memory, 32 megabytes, Pedersen said. Before, police had said the machines could be upgraded to only 24 megabytes. HTE's computer technicians will be in Durham working on the laptops today, Pedersen said.

Without working computers, Durham's police officers have been relegated to the clipboard-and-pen method of writing police reports. To get information on a suspect's record, police officers must call headquarters and have someone look it up, which takes longer than pulling it up on the computer, Pedersen said. HTE's contract with the city includes insurance, called a surety bond, that the company will actually provide the service it contracted for. That means the city will either get its money back or will get working computers, Rosenthal said.

The bond-holder is RLI Insurance, whose agent, W. E. Love Jr. and Associates, is in Burlington. HTE could not be reached Monday. Staff writer Rah Bickley can be reached at 956-2421 or rbickley@nando.com

http://www.news-observer.com/daily/2000/04/04/tri09.html

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-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), April 04, 2000.


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