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Sims takes blame for computer woes, asks for $7 million more

Gist: No practical way to retreat, no responsible way to barrel ahead

David Quigg;

June 23, 2000

King County can't even begin to salvage its snafu-plagued Financial Systems Replacement Project without another $7 million, Executive Ron Sims said Thursday.

Sims also shouldered responsibility for where the project stands today - incomplete and unreliable with its $38 million budget nearly exhausted.

"This was done under my watch," Sims said. "You have to blame the person that was in charge of this county."

This buck-stops-here stance means Sims does not want to spend the new money figuring out which subordinates actually screwed things up. Earlier this year, a watchdog consultant hired by the County Council warned that a "crisis in leadership and program management" was jeopardizing the project.

"The public wants it fixed," Sims said Thursday. "They won't remember the names (of those responsible) one hour after they're in the paper."

Several project leaders have retired or resigned.

Devising a plan to clean up the current mess means continuing to spend more than $1 million per month, Sims has concluded. An even faster money burn prompted him to "pause" the project last month and fire KPMG, the consulting firm in charge of implementing the

various financial systems.

Sims' new plan effectively continues that pause - a choice that reflects his conviction that there's no practical way to retreat and no responsible way to barrel ahead.

"We're so far along that we couldn't reverse it if we wanted to," Sims said.

Take the new payroll system, for instance. About one-third of county employees now depend on it to cut their paychecks accurately. But lacking adequate training and supervision, payroll workers are making mistakes, Sims' newly appointed troubleshooters said Thursday.

Better training and supervision for those payroll workers are part of what Sims intends to buy with the proposed $7 million. His troubleshooters - project manager David Martinez and executive project coordinator Caroline Whalen - aim to "stabilize" the payroll system by the end of September.

Other elements of the $7 million plan would continue through December. Over the next six months, Sims wants to "document the work performed to date and provide a recommendation and budget to complete the project based on a comprehensive replanning effort." The resulting plan would go through an "external peer evaluation," Sims said.

Whalen had praise for the only scrutiny to date that resembles an external peer evaluation - the work of the council's watchdog consultant. She said Pacific Consulting Group's analyses helped her and Martinez get their bearings.

Pacific Consulting's president, Timothy C. Easton, said his firm will report on Sims' new plan at next Wednesday's meeting of the council budget committee. His preliminary take is positive - to a point.

"Given the situation, this is probably the wisest course," he said. "But it shouldn't have gotten to this point."

Councilman Rob McKenna (R-Bellevue), chairman of the budget committee, called the current situation "disappointing." He noted that even under the rosiest outcome of the Sims proposal, the county will:

* Have spent $45 million on a project with an original budget of $38 million.

* Have only one-third of its work force switched over to a modern payroll system.

* Have no new financial system.

McKenna said he needs to be convinced that Sims' new cautious, damage-control approach won't cost the county more in the long run.

Sims acknowledged that some talented personnel with hard-to-replace experience on the project will leave if things stay on hold. Already, as part of the initial pause, about 20 percent of the 102 people who spent the last two years working on the project are gone - either by choice or by layoff, Whalen said.

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* Reach staff writer David Quigg at 206-467-9845 or david.quigg@mail.tribnet.com.

http://www.tribnet.com/frame.asp?/news/local/0623a16.html

-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), June 24, 2000