Wednesday, July 10, 2013

LIU STATEMENT ON MAYOR’S E911 PROBE


  City Comptroller John C. Liu stated the following in response to news of the Department of Investigation’s (DOI’s) Emergency 911 probe:
“We welcome Mayor Bloomberg’s belated decision to probe the problems in his upgrade of the City’s emergency 911 call system. Our office began investigating those problems three years ago, and our 2012 audits uncovered $1 billion in mismanagement, waste, and possible fraud in that project. In response, the mayor called our efforts ‘stupid.’  

“Better late than never, Mike.” 

Background
The following chronology shows the actions Comptroller Liu has taken to investigate and ameliorate the mismanagement and cost overruns plaguing the upgrade of the E911 system, which is known inside City government as the Emergency Communications Transformation Program, or ECTP.

In March 2012, Comptroller Liu released an audit that found that from its inception ECTP had suffered severe management flaws that led to a cascade of delays and $1 billion in cost overruns. Auditors found an alarming lack of decision-making by City Hall, which led to major technical missteps, the abandonment of a critical objective, and poor vendor performance.  
 
Audit: Management of 911 Call Center Project Was Ineffective:

In May 2012, Comptroller Liu released another audit that found that Hewlett Packard, the contractor selected to streamline the 911 call system, did not meet City qualifications for the job and had monitored the work so poorly that it had overbilled taxpayers by as much as $163 million.

Audit: Mismanagement of 911 Upgrade Picked Taxpayers’ Pockets:

In January 2013, Comptroller Liu warned Mayor Bloomberg that his office may reject future contracts with Hewlett Packard if it fails to pay back the $163 million it owes the City.

Release: City Should Boycott Hewlett Packard:

In May 2013, Comptroller Liu wrote to Mayor Bloomberg urging him to recoup the $59 million in cost overruns that the Administration estimated arose from Verizon’s failure to meet its contractual obligations, and offered to work with him to renegotiate the contract so that the City would not have to rely on Verizon technicians to operate this critical public-safety system.
 
Liu letter to Mayor Bloomberg on Verizon E911 contract:

In June 2013, in response to the recent crashes in the E911 system that have call-center workers relying on pen and paper to relay information to dispatchers, Comptroller Liu commenced a new audit of the system. That audit will examine whether the Mayor’s Office of Citywide Emergency Communications is successfully monitoring the integration and implementation of the Computer Aided Dispatch System into the ECTP.

Audit letter to Mayor’s Office of Citywide Emergency Communications:


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