As I was pouring over various Web pages and documents, looking for something to rail against, I ran across a subpage of the Virginia.gov site. The Virginia portal (that's a website that goes to other websites, or one of those things on Star Trek that takes you to the Gamma Quadrant), long one of my favorite government sites, is part of what appears to be the ever-cloudy legacy of IT gone sour in Virginia. The portal is claimed as one of the few VITA success, using the model of the public-private partnership to bring government to citizens.
Only, after a bit of digging and some calling around, the numbers don't add up.
A private vendor is responsible for maintaining the Virginia.gov portal. That company is Virginia Interactive, which is part of a larger Corporate Entity called NIC Inc. Virginia Interactive gets paid something in the neighborhood (and a nice neighborhood it is) of $4 million a year to keep the portal lights on. VITA holds the contract and seems to think they're getting their money's worth. Well, let's do the numbers, shall we?
Judging from what many states pay, and taking into account the Virginia site is mostly static HTML, you can keep the site going and fairly fresh with one FTE (Full Time Employee), one server, and one T1 connection. Pay the FTE about $45k a year (it's just HTML and pictures), buy the server at a reasonable $3,000, and pay for the T1 at a slightly painful $6,000 a year, and you get a total of: $54,000 a year (I know, the server doesn't burn out every year, but the math is easier). For a grand total profit of $3,946,000 a YEAR.
That's a lot of scratch, me buckos.
One insider pointed out that for that $3.9 million, the vendor does a lot of free work. Like what? Hard to say. The State Payment Portal? There's an extra fee attached. Hunting and Fishing licenses online? Fee. Health Professions information? Fee. Lobbyist in a box? Service of Process? PEO Services? Web design? Fee, fee, fee, fee.
DMV records? Well, that's got some wiggle room. Assuming for the moment that DMV can't figure out how to get THEIR DATA online in an "enhanced" manner, the technology being used is fairly old and standardized. Is it worth $3.9 million a year? Many say, "Hell no." A million, maybe. If you aren't charging for all that other stuff, too.
So, only $2.9 million a year in profit? Hardly sounds like VITA is saving the state any money, does it? I'll do it for $1 million a year, and save the state almost $2 million a year. How's THAT for cost-savings...
Makes me wonder what we're in store with the RFPs being reviewed from IBM and Northrop. A billion a year to cut grass?
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4 comments:
sounds like another example of vita being in bed with a vendor. does anyone remember the bearingpoint fiasco that helped create vita?
Since this is public funds this company is getting paid with, shouldn't there be a public list of what the state gets for their $4 million a year?
Living in Virgnia and having just concluded a year-long battle with DMV over license plates, this doesn't surprise me.
For a year I've had plates issued by DMV that: 1) Didn't match the registration card, 2) didn't match what the DMV had in their database as registered to my car, 3) what the actual car was that had the plates that DMV said my car was registered to.
It took me a year to get DMV to finally understand what the problem was and fix it.
But guess what? They can't fix it. Turns out that because my vanity plate (the only way I can remember my license plate number) has a special character in it, the DMV database can't see the character. Mind you, they still issue the plate with the character, but the database can't store it so DMV just stores the letters it can.
With moronic systems design like this, I'm not surprised that shady companies like NIC thrive in this state.
I'm not sure how shady NIC is, as a company's goal is to make money for their shareholders. It may just be a lack of efficient controls that allows them to do it at the expense of the Commonwealth. Did you have specific examples of the "shady" aspect you'd like to share?
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