CityTime refund due

From the NY Post:

The company responsible for the fraud-ridden CityTime payroll system acknowledged yesterday it will have to pay back at least $232 million to the Big Apple, according to records filed with the feds.

Virginia-based Science Applications International Corp., which already has sacked three top execs because of the CityTime boondoggle, said that it might well have to pay even more to City Hall but that the preliminary reimbursement sum is already proving to be a drag on company revenues. SAIC yesterday announced a $17 million loss for the third quarter.

“It is possible that the figure could be larger,” according to an SAIC statement released as the stock market was closing for the day.

SAIC CEO Walt Havenstein, in a conference call with analysts, said the company made the loss calculation based on recent “developments,” but he refused to elaborate.
CityTime was supposed to prevent fraud and time padding by city workers but instead became the biggest financial scandal of Mayor Bloomberg’s 10-year reign.

The megabucks payment is about 30 percent of the total of some $760 million the city spent on the system.

What's he getting out of it?

From the Daily News:

Will taxpayers be held hostage to the CityTime money pit for years to come?

Defense giant SAIC, the main contractor on the scandal-plagued $700 million timekeeping and payroll project, failed to provide city officials with so much vital information about the system's design that no one else can operate or maintain it.

That's the astonishing conclusion of a new study of CityTime by accounting firm KPMG.

The knowledge transfer that is standard in private industry for such huge information technology purchases did not occur with SAIC, the report concluded.

"The lack of formal knowledge transfer planning and documentation increases the risk that the City will continue to be reliant on vendor support of the application," KPMG said in a 62-page report it handed to city officials on Jan. 11.

More than 10 years after CityTime was launched, it "is not only overdue, overpriced and wrought with allegations of fraud, but today we learned that it doesn't even come with a user manual," city Controller John Liu said in statement.

Mayor Bloomberg agreed to commission the KPMG study in September to win Liu's approval for extending until June the deadline for SAIC to finish rolling out CityTime to the full target population of 165,000 city workers.

The city Office of Payroll Administration is jointly run by the controller and the mayor, so the vote of both men is needed for any new contract.

"All deficiencies caused by the vendor [should be] cured at no additional cost to taxpayers," Liu insisted yesterday.

It is absurd, however, that a private company created timekeeping and payroll system for public workers that only it can operate.

Federal prosecutors recently subpoenaed SAIC's own records as part of their continuing probe of the project.

Now we learn that for $700 million, the city got a system it can't operate itself.

Bloomberg would never allow an outside vendor to exercise such unprecedented control over the computer systems of his own company.

So why does he accept it for the payroll system of New York City workers?

Still keeping CityTime

From the Daily News:

Even as he freezes pay for teachers and slashes budgets for most city agencies, Mayor Bloomberg plans to toss nearly another $100 million into the CityTime money pit next year.

That's the computerized timekeeping and payroll system that is seven years behind schedule and has already cost taxpayers more than $700 million - 10 times its original price tag.

The mayor has admitted CityTime is "a disaster," yet he refuses to turn off the spigot for the army of computer consultants that has fed off the project for at least a decade.

Beginning next month, the Office of Payroll Administration will hire 61 computer technicians at an average salary of $77,000 - and all will be assigned to CityTime.

But those new employees will cost only a tiny portion of the new spending allotted for CityTime.

An official at the Office of Payroll Administration confirmed yesterday that the agency will spend an additional $93 million next year on the project...

From Crains:

Mark Page, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, told members of the City Council Finance Committee that to cut off funding now to the CityTime project would render the investment made so far worthless, forcing the city to spend more money in the future for a new system. Mr. Page said once CityTime was fully implemented, by the end of 2011, it would eventually cost around $30 million a year to maintain the system.

Bloomberg admits payroll system a disaster; has no idea who is in charge

From the Daily News:

Mayor Bloomberg acknowledged Monday the $722 million CityTime system has "been a disaster" - but offered no plans to fix it.

He couldn't even say who was in charge of it.

The project to replace paper timesheets with hand scanners for city workers was supposed to cost $68 million when proposed in 1998, but is still only one-third finished.

"It's been a disaster. It is one of these massive computer projects that very seldom ever is successful," said Bloomberg, who made his fortune with financial data systems.

He made no suggestions on how to fix CityTime, and mistakenly told reporters Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler had been working on it for years.

"Ed's spent, it's an incalculable amount of time over the last few years looking at it, and you know, he's still trying to figure out," Bloomberg said, turning to Skyler. "You want to add anything to that?"

"No," the startled Skyler replied.

CityTime is managed by the Office of Payroll Administration, which is jointly controlled by the mayor and controller.

OPA Director Joel Bondy reports to Mark Page, Bloomberg's budget director.