Fixing the IT infrastructure of the City

[Lowell]

An outstanding article by Crain's Amy Haimerl details the crisis of the City of Detroit's broken, obsolete and insecure Information Technology [IT] system, the brain at the heart of its operations, and the plans and challenges new CIO Beth Niblock faces to fix it. It is so bad that it has to be rebuilt from the bottom up.

[Tapped by Duggan after being part of a White House assessment team] she agreed to come and fix an infrastructure so fundamentally broken that police precincts can't share information, smartphones can't sync with city systems, 70 percent of financial reports are entered by hand, $1 million checks are found hiding in desk drawers, and the tax system was called "catastrophic" by the IRS in an audit.

And from later in the article

For example, it costs the city $62 to cut a payroll check because the system is so manual it takes 149 full-time employees — including 51 uniformed officers — to run it. At a cost of $19.2 million per year.

she is focused on replacing all of the city's computers, 80 percent of which are at least four years old and almost all of which run Windows XP or older. That makes the city's "fleet," as Niblock calls it, obsolete by industry standards. Microsoft doesn't even support XP any longer.

The path back...

• Establish a CIO.
• Evaluate citywide IT infrastructure.
• Promote civic innovation.
• Make freely available open government data more accessible and usable.
• Develop a 311 system, which is similar to 911 but for nonemergency calls about city services.
• Improve enterprise geographic information systems.
• Enable online permitting.

As the CIO of Louisville, Niblock had no idea she would be the check mark for item No. 1.

The costs and savings are immense and once functioning properly expect a few worms to be discovered.

[Dan Wesson]

An outstanding article by Crain's Amy Haimerl details the crisis of the City of Detroit's broken, obsolete and insecure Information Technology [IT] system, the brain at the heart of its operations, and the plans and challenges new CIO Beth Niblock faces to fix it. It is so bad that it has to be rebuilt from the bottom up.



And from later in the article




The path back...

The costs and savings are immense and once functioning properly expect a few worms to be discovered.

What are Detroit' priorities?

As a Neo-Luddite I ask, what is it Detroit needs?

Do you want to put people to work or machines?

Look around you, what do you see?

A lot of idle hands up to no good.

Save Detroit some money only to be given away to the 1% or give the under class a chance to earn a living.

Teach a child to fish he or she eats for a life time.

[48202]

What are Detroit' priorities?
To stop being dysfunctional, and start being functional.

As a Neo-Luddite I ask, what is it Detroit needs?
To stop pretending that technology does not improve our lives.

Do you want to put people to work or machines?
Yes, both.

Look around you, what do you see?
City employees who don't have the tools they need to do their jobs efficiently.

A lot of idle hands up to no good.
See previous response.

Save Detroit some money only to be given away to the 1% or give the under class a chance to earn a living.
Go buy a horse and buggy. Cheaper than a car.


Teach a child to fish he or she eats for a life time.
And a functional fishing rod is better than a broken one.

[Honky Tonk]

What are Detroit' priorities?

As a Neo-Luddite I ask, what is it Detroit needs?

Do you want to put people to work or machines?

Look around you, what do you see?

A lot of idle hands up to no good.

Save Detroit some money only to be given away to the 1% or give the under class a chance to earn a living.

Teach a child to fish he or she eats for a life time.

Dan, You did hit the nail on the head. Though there's merit to your post, and I understand what you're saying, that's also Detroit's downfall. It doesn't encourage education or growth, plus it's needlessly expensive and totally ineffective. You're looking @ the family and friends plan in action. Someone knows someone who dropped out of school and needs a job. Someone else looks @ them and thinks "They didn't graduate and they're doing fine". Soon you another person on the plan.

[mwilbert]

As has been said many times on this forum, city government needs to be run to provide services efficiently, not to provide jobs by running inefficiently. So yes, they need to make these kinds of changes.

It isn't surprising at all that Detroit hasn't had a decent IT infrastructure; I am not aware of any aspect of administration where the city has met even the most minimal standards. Perhaps that will now change.

[JBMcB]

Do you want to put people to work or machines?

Look around you, what do you see?

A lot of idle hands up to no good.

Even Marx thought that make-work programs were stupid. There ain't much that all economists agree on - from every shade of communism to socialism to capitalism to corporatism - but they all agree on that.

[Willi]

Where do you think they should start first ?

-The tech expert Mayor Mike Duggan hired to overhaul Detroit's hopelessly antiquated computer technology testified to just how bad it is.
Duggan recruited Beth Niblock from Louisville,Ky., where she was that city's information technology chief.
-She said Detroit is "generations behind" current standards. The city's e-mail system is unreliable, and the city's systems susceptible to cyber-security attacks. The outdated computers complicate tax assessment and collection, internal communications, issuing employee paychecks and dispatching for the city's police and fire departments.
--"It is fundamentally broken or beyond fundamentally broken," Niblock said. "In some cases fundamentally broken would be good."

[Hypestyles]

The city should have some kind of free wi-fi for lower income residential neighborhoods.

[Crumbled_pavement]

I bet money more than anything there is resistance from all parties involved to updating the city's IT infrastructure, and that is more of the problem than the technology or upgrade process/priorities. Inefficiencies allow corruption and job security, two things I'm sure there are a lot of people who want more of.

[emu steve]

I bet money more than anything there is resistance from all parties involved to updating the city's IT infrastructure, and that is more of the problem than the technology or upgrade process/priorities. Inefficiencies allow corruption and job security, two things I'm sure there are a lot of people who want more of.

I assume it is personnel related. Not having a 1st rate IT staff, contracting, etc. etc.

IT is easily an area where incumbents' job skills frequently don't mesh with changing job skill requirements.

[Honky Tonk]

The city should have some kind of free wi-fi for lower income residential neighborhoods.

To compliment the tax-free housing, free water, and free electricity.

[313WX]

The city should have some kind of free wi-fi for lower income residential neighborhoods.

Can't they access this via the Detroit Public Library?

[Willi]

Wowzers to the max !!!!!!

People like Lowell and others ,"""get it""" while others are expecting items for free

The city needs MILLIONS of $$$$ to retrofit itself for the future in order to provide ANY services

[Hypestyles]

high-tech is the new segregation. Get a late pass.

[Willi]

Bullshit - not buying that rhetoric

Every city in Amercia needs infrastructure
--- it has zero to do with race, ethnicity or culture

Warren had a system in place that worked well