Thursday, March 22, 2012

911 bungle & bloat

From the Daily News:

City Hall aides repeatedly bungled supervision of a massive upgrade of the 911 system, even as the project fell years behind schedule and its cost ballooned by as much as $1 billion, an audit has found.

When Mayor Bloomberg launched the 911 project in 2004, he promised a seamless system that would replace antiquated police, fire and EMS call-taking and dispatch functions with 21st century technology. It had a price tag of $1.3 billion and was supposed to be done in three years.

City Hall now concedes the cost has zoomed to at least $2 billion, and Controller John Liu will claim Wednesday that the price tag is closer to $2.3 billion.

Liu will also release an audit that concludes management failures dogged the multiagency project almost from the start. It blames City Hall aides for repeatedly failing to address the problems.

Much like the notorious CityTime payroll project, the 911 upgrade kept devouring astonishing amounts of money while getting delayed.

A new Brooklyn 911 center that was supposed to be finished in 2007 did not become fully operational until late last year. A second emergency center originally scheduled for the same time in the Bronx - as a backup in case of terrorist attack or natural disaster - will not be ready until 2015.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sois 911 currently f----d up...and in the meantime...do I have to rely on .357 instead?

Does NYC even know how to wipe its own ass without spending billions of dollars on fancy toilet paper?

Anonymous said...

I thought Bloomberg was supposed to be a financial genius. First, CityTime, now this. What's next? He wouldn't treat his personal fortune this way. He's richer than when he took office.

Anonymous said...

Proves that all these petty tyrants that treat us like serfs and have gerrymandered themselves into lifetime security are, as they appear, rather dull people that are totally unprepared to responsibly govern.

Like they even care to.... or need to....

Anonymous said...

It also shows you how "necessary" this gold-plated yet-unimplemented high-tech 911 turned out to be.