LIU STATEMENT ON MAYOR’S OFFICE RELEASE OF 911 CALL SYSTEM CONSULTANT REPORT
City Comptroller John C. Liu today issued the following statement on the decision by the Mayor’s Office to disclose, after delaying, the partial contents of a taxpayer funded consultant report on the City’s 911 call system upgrade:
“It’s sadly ironic that the City hired an expensive outside consultant to review the work of other expensive outside consultants. This report is not only a waste of more taxpayer dollars, but seems to be duplicative of what my auditors have already found. My audit team is currently finalizing our second report on this project, which will delve further into issues regarding the financial management of this important initiative. We will review the details of what is being released today but it won’t change the fact that City Hall has consistently shirked its responsibility to properly manage IT projects during the past decade, which has resulted in fraud, cost overruns and massive completion delays.”
Background:
Comptroller Liu recently released a year-long audit which detailed massive mismanagement, seven years of delays, and one billion dollars in costs overruns in the upgrade of the 911 system. The report is available at www.comptroller.nyc.gov/
In addition, Liu’s office is currently finalizing a second report on the Emergency Communications Transformation Program (ECTP) which delves further into the financial aspects associated with the project. The audit will be released in the coming weeks.
In December 2010, Comptroller Liu’s office rejected the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications’ (DoITT) request for a $286 million contract for ill-defined services based on hourly consulting fees for ECTP. That contract, which was with Northrop Grumman, was restructured to clearly defined deliverables, with a cost revised down to $95 million.
In a related report, Liu released an audit on the Fire Department’s reporting of response times in the Mayor’s Management Report, which found discrepancies in the calculation and reporting of emergency response times. Link to the report: www.comptroller.nyc.gov/
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