The CCMS Boondoggle

[walterbyrd]

CCMS = "Court Case Management System"

Pamela Jones, over at Groklaw, commented "Follow the money. That's my advice."



Judicial Council Watcher

> CCMS is being written by an army of Indians imported to do the work under H1 visas.

http://judicialcouncilwatcher.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/resources-advice-for-displaced-court-workers/

I did a quick search, on google, and found several job ads for H-1Bs to work on the CCMS. Most of the ads were out of date, and Dice will not let post the URLs anyway.

Biggest Court in Nation Cuts Operations in 'Crippling Blow'

> The immediate effect of the cuts is the layoff of 300 court employees this June plus the closure of 50 courtrooms.... For many trial judges, the cuts represent past policies of the central administrative office coming home to roost.

> Last summer, for example, the Administrative Office of the Courts budgeted hundreds of millions more for an IT project, called the Court Case Management System, that has already drained a half-billion dollars from court funds. Those enormous additional sums, for an IT project considered a fiasco by many trial judges, were proposed as the budget crisis loomed....

> Individual judges, however, expressed a long-smoldering anger with the bureaucrats who control the purse strings and the governing council of judges that approves their spending projects....

> "Instead, AOC priorities were maintained at all costs," he concluded. "This is what becomes of empire building."

http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/03/05/44425.htm

Court case management system gets harsh review from state auditor

> State Auditor Elaine Howle said the Court Case Management System (CCMS) faces significant challenges because of poor project management, including inadequate planning, a failure to analyze whether the system would provide a cost-beneficial solution to the needs of the superior courts and inaccurate cost estimates, starting from $260 million in 2004 and escalating to $1.9 billion by 2010. The Judicial Council puts that figure at $1.3 billion.

http://www.calbarjournal.com/March2011/TopHeadlines/TH2.aspx

Case Mismanagement: A Chat about CCMS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImZCXn5Xvso

[0xFFFFFFFF]

There is really no excuse for $500,000,000 IT projects in this day and age.  The high cost used to be caused by the need to buy thousands of new workstations, do wiring, and other infrastructure.  Since everyone is already wired today, you're down to the software and a few servers. 

This one looks pretty awful.  Click up the various links, here are some good ones:

'Finished' Court IT Project to Cost State 100s of Millions for Years

http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/02/16/43967.htm

Sacramento Court Describes IT System in Survey as a Nightmare

http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/05/27/36925.htm

In a withering 33-page survey answer, Sacramento chronicles the almost continuous problems with the new computer system, from constant system crashes and slow response times to pervasive defects that the developer, high-priced consulting firm Deloitte, seemed incapable of adequately fixing.

--

Notice the key word "Deloitte".  Explains a lot. 

[walterbyrd]

> Notice the key word "Deloitte". Explains a lot.

You may have a point. I have been following PJ's advice, and trying to follow the money.Ironically enough, I found this article:

Follow The Money
February 27, 2012
http://judicialcouncilwatcher.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/follow-the-money/

Seems that Deloitte has been lobbying hard to not have any oversight, especially on this project. Delloitte has also tried to hide that lobbying. Delloitte was caught cheating, and fined a laughable $8000. Considering that this project is in the billions, this like fining Dolliotte for pocket change.

There seems to be loads of corruption, all over the place. I am still looking into it.

Court Case Management System Developer Fined Over Lobbying

 April 11, 2011

> Deloitte Consulting, the company that is developing California's controversial Court Case Management System, has agreed to pay the state $8,000 to settle charges that it failed to properly report two years of lobbying activities. The reports for those two years reflect Deloitte's efforts to advance the CCMS project as public scrutiny intensified.

http://www.law.com/jsp/lawtechnologynews/PubArticleLTN.jsp?id=1202489548982&slreturn=1

On The Money: Judges Blow Whistle On State Agency’s Hiring
November 22, 2011 10:30 PM

> The judges say millions of taxpayer dollars are going to outside firms like the Blackstone Technology Group, All-Star Consulting and Ascent Services Group despite state budget cuts and a hard freeze on hiring.

http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2011/11/22/on-the-money-judges-blow-whistle-on-state-agencys-hiring/

[0xFFFFFFFF]

The tradition for any of the big consulting houses, and it sounds like they have it in spades in this project, is to have excellent management and horrible technology, go with third-tier vendors and newbie code monkeys.

Good *design* seems to be a totally lost art these days.  ANY design seems to be totally a lost art, it is _assumed_ that there is only one way to build a system and that nobody needs to say or do a thing but write code.  This is actually the weak point in most Agile methodologies as well.  And the weakest thing of all is GUI/page design, even though this is the #1 thing that determines user acceptance.  You need to design and then validate designs, clicks, response times, error rates.  Why am I bothering to talk, I'm a generation out of sync with reality.

Deloitte is probably on cost-plus management, so they would want bugs so they can bill for rework.

[walterbyrd]

0xFFFFFFFF, you seem to know more about this than I do.

I found an interesting post. Considering this was from 2009, I think this person may know what he/she is posting about.

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pacwest50 | September 16, 2009 at 11:32 am |
Sorry to say this but that $400 million is a low ball. It does NOT take into account all costs incurred to date. Many are buried in the trial court costs and other new money put into the project. You know who got the contracts: Deloitte. Many may remember that they were the ones that sold the payroll project to the LA unified school district in southern california that failed to pay the teachers. Deloitte has been in bed with the AOC for years and sucking the taxpayer dry. They don’t have to take kickbacks…the AOC gives it to them through the front door. Ask about their new contract: $600 million!!! Hear about that in their open and transparent system? There is NO oversight of AOC spending on this project and an audit is long overdue.
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http://aocwatcher.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/aoc-to-spend-billions-on-court-case-management-system-ccm...

[IAmNumber813]

I blame the Indian infested IT consulting firm Deloitte Consulting for taking advantage of the technically illiterate California state employees (i.e., California could have copied or used the federal court's PACER system as a starting point). California should follow the remedy other states have done and should file a lawsuit to recover all of their money from Deloitte (Indiana has recently filed suit against IBM for a similar project boondoogle).

Indiana wants $1.3B from IBM in welfare contract suit

http://wraltechwire.com/business/tech_wire/news/blogpost/7595225/

This comment from an informed reader is illustrative of Deloitte's deficient management capability on this project:

"Deloitte has been milking the AOC mismanagement gravy train for all its worth. Given the marked lack of code annotation and change management documentation in the base code as denoted by the independent reports, a good portion of the bugs and rework over the last couple of years took significantly longer and cost significantly more than it should have."

http://judicialcouncilwatcher.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/resources-advice-for-displaced-court-workers/

This statement indicates that California is being taken for a ride by Deloitte:

"The ultimate technical objective of the project is to allow lawyers to email documents to the court rather than deliver paper documents by hand."

http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/02/16/43967.htm

I wonder how many American citizens and/or companies were permitted to bid for this project.

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Boycott Companies That Boycott American STEM Professionals

[walterbyrd]

> I blame the Indian infested IT consulting firm Deloitte Consulting for taking advantage of the technically illiterate California state employees (i.e., California could have copied or used the federal court's PACER system as a starting point). California should follow the remedy other states have done and should file a lawsuit to recover all of their money from Deloitte (Indiana has recently filed suit against IBM for a similar project boondoogle).

I am not sure that it's a matter of technical illiteracy. From what I have been reading, Deloitte has been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to  bribe lobby California officials. I suspect that CA officials are happy to take the money and look the other way.

I have not added up all the "contributions" made by Deloitte, but I am seeing $134K here, and another $117K there, all over the place. I would not been surprised to find that Doloitte has spent well in excess of $1 million, by now. Which would not be a bad investment for Delloitte, considering the size of this project.

I think there may be another lobbyist group, that works with Deloitte, which is funded by CA taxpayers. Still looking into it.

[walterbyrd]

April 1, 2012

> The plug has been pulled on one of the biggest boondoggles in California history - the effort to build a $2 billion computer system linking the state's 58 county courts. It never worked, and some say it was doomed from the start.

The program had run so amok, according to the state auditor, that one of the subcontracts had 102 change orders, pushing that one bill alone from $33 million to $310 million.

> Faced with mounting criticism from judges and legislators, the state Judicial Council finally voted Tuesday to kill the out-of-control program. But not before spending more than $500 million trying to launch it.

> "We are closing courtrooms, we are laying off people we need to run the courts, and at the same time here they were spending this money," said Kern County Superior Court Judge David Lampe, head of the 400-strong Alliance of California Judges, a dissident group that waged an all-out campaign to halt the runaway spending.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/01/BAAL1NSN68.DTL

[wizgod]

I kudoed every one simply because you're all correct. there is a whole lot of stench comming from things being done by outsiders and it seems that no one is paying attention at all. Kind of reminds me of that banking debackle where everybody got rich with funny money and when the cards fell down and all the roaches scattered after the light came on guess who got stuck holding the bill...remember folks. Bernie Madoff didn't get away with stealing. Some people actually knew what he was doing and guess what. As long as the richer people got there money back what happened to those who had more to lose than money....still waiting on getting paid.