NYC's New 911 System Will Be 7 Years Late, $1 Billion Over Budget
March 21, 2012, 5:14 p.m.
The city's attempt to consolidate its emergency communications system was supposed to be done in 2008 at a cost of $1.3 billion. Now it scheduled to end in 2015 at a cost of $2.3 billion.
Bloomberg at one of the new, very delayed, 911 call centers in January
With the CityTime scandal slowly being sorted out, Comptroller John Liu wouldn't want you to think that Mayor Bloomberg's administration wasn't finding other ways to hand over your tax dollars to overzealous, under-supervised contractors. Not when the city's already messy Emergency Communications Transformation Program (ECTP), meant to update our 911 system, continues to bleed money. Seriously, the project is now projected to be seven years late and a billion over budget.
Liu first brought attention to the program's woes last year when he rejected a $286 million contract for "ill-defined services" (it was later resubmitted and approved at $95 million) and today he has released a damning audit of the situation. But first, some background: In 2004 the city's Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) started a program with "a reasonable and justified premise of establishing two Public Safety Answering Centers (PSACs) for "the purpose of consolidating the City’s emergency response services to establish system redundancy as well as to have a backup facility; modernize and strengthen the 911 network; improve data-sharing among City agencies; and enhance coordination and deployment of resources during emergencies." Great, right?
Except, the Comptroller's office says, things have not gone right. Its "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. Other findings show that the current project lacks a quality assurance monitor, and the newly created agency to oversee ECTP is ill-equipped for the job." The $1.3 billion project was supposed to be done in 2008. Now the Bloomberg administration says that'll be more like 2015 and the final project cost will be more like $2.3 billion.
"Taxpayers are just tired of hearing about out-of-control projects involving expensive outside consultants," the embattled Comptroller said in a statement. "This is unfortunately yet another example of massive waste and delay due to City management that was at best lackadaisical, and at worst, inept.”
To try and stem the problems the Comptroller's office has made a series of suggestions to the DoITT (common sense stuff like "increase its efforts to fill open positions with appropriately qualified personnel" and having "its current governance strategy expanded, formulated into a plan, reviewed and formally approved by all stakeholders") which have been accepted. But it is already too late for some parts of the project. For instance? "A shared Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) between FDNY, NYPD, and EMS scheduled to be completed in 2007, was never implemented and may never be fully established. As a result of this failure in delivery, the NYPD portion of the CAD program has been moved from ECTP completely, resulting in additional expenditures."
