As reported by Jason Stein of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the state is delaying implementation of the new State Transforming Agency Resources (STAR) computer system, which will cost taxpayers approximately $2.5 to $3.5 million more than expected.
The first phase of STAR going live in July includes the state’s financial and contracting and procurement systems. The second deals with personnel and payroll systems is scheduled for 2017 and will be followed by a third phase dealing with the unique needs of just the state Department of Transportation.
The project is replacing the state’s existing programs with Oracle’s PeopleSoft product.
If successful, STAR would give taxpayers and elected officials a reliable system that could deliver an estimated $100 million in net savings over a decade through lower maintenance and higher efficiency across all of state government.
But as in past state computer debacles, a failed or further delayed project would leave taxpayers with hefty bills, an IT system lagging far behind those of private-sector companies and no good alternatives.
Six years ago, the STAR project itself was halted by Gov. Jim Doyle’s administration after an alarming collapse of savings estimates, a legislative audit and public criticism of the project from its own leader at the time.
The project was dusted off in late 2011 by the Walker administration and then restarted in earnest in June 2013.
The fact that the STAR project was restarted by Gov. Walker despite the fact it had previously been stopped due to a collapse of saving estimates and public criticism of the project by its own leader should give any reasonable person cause for concern about whether there’s really cost savings to be found in the program.
Who is the contractor installing the new system, and how much did they donate? I’m guessing, after several more million is cost over-runs, the project will be declared unworkable again, and all previous expenditures pissed away. It’s how we roll.
Dice, excellent questions. My guess is that most of it’s running on proprietary software, probably in India. That we’re essentially paying them to maintain their software, a subsidy which helps them with all their other customers.
It should be running on hardware owned by the state of Wisconsin and on software maintained by engineers who are state workers. That’s the only scenario where the loyalty of the people managing Wisconsin IT is with Wisconsin taxpayers. I’m not saying you can’t hire outside consultants….. IT’s incredibly complex and getting more so, but if the experts aren’t state employees, you’ve lost control of state IT, which is what I think has happened.