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By Mel Duvall
An audit of a $2 billion project to upgrade Virginia's computer systems has found that the project fell short of expectations, is nearly a year behind schedule, and has caused significant disruptions to a wide range of agencies.
In a damaging report released Tuesday, a joint legislative review commission accused Northrop Grumman, the primary contractor, of failing to adequately plan for the project and underestimating the work involved. It also blamed the Virginia Information Technology Agency (VITA), the agency charged with overseeing the initiative, for failing to perform enough due diligence in awarding the contract.
Ironically, VITA was established in 2003 after another joint legislative review committee found that some $103 million in funds had been wasted on state IT projects between 1991 and 2002 due to poor oversight.
In 2003, the newly formed VITA pressed to modernize the state's IT infrastructure, believing that a cross-agency approach to IT could save as much as $100 million in annual costs. It solicited proposals from contractors and in 2005 awarded a ten-year, $2 billion contract to Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman.
Under the terms of the contract, Northrop Grumman was charged with implementing a widespread transformation of the state's IT infrastructure -- including networks, e-mail systems, computer upgrades, security and help desk operations -- between July 2006 and July 2009. In all, the transformation involved 59 projects at 72 agencies and more than 2,000 sites.
According to the report, by September 2009 only 32 of 59 projects had been completed (54 percent), and work at only 26 agencies had been finished (38 percent).
Northrop Grumman has submitted a corrective plan with a proposed completion date of June 2010, but that does include four key agencies: the Virginia State Police Department, the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, the Department of Medical Assistance Services and the Department of Forensic Science.
The report cites a number of reasons for the breakdown in performance. Key among them:
- Information collected during the 2005 due diligence period was incomplete and did not adequately capture the complexities of the upgrade. The dependencies between agency applications and infrastructure was not understood.
- The upgrade would create a standard IT environment, but individual agencies required modifications to hundreds of applications to work with the new infrastructure.
- Northrup Grumman did not adequately plan to ensure the continuity of agency operations during the transformation and as a result a number of agencies experienced disruptions during switchovers. Disruptions included the Virginia State Police in Newport News losing Internet access for 78 hours in May 2009; the Department of Motor Vehicles in Bland going without network access for 31 hours in June 2009; and the Department of Environmental Quality in Roanoke losing network access for 31 hours in May 2009.
Despite the many issues cited in the report, it appears the state may have little choice but to see the work through to the end. Terminating the contract early could result in a $400 million penalty and leave the state without a partner to manage its IT infrastructure.
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