Posted on 01/12/2004 6:56:15 AM PST by TaxRelief
The program to connect all North Carolina schools with a sophisticated computer network began in 1999 with a contract for $54 million.
The state's commitment is now $113 million and counting, and the final tab will probably exceed $150 million.
Plans called for all of the state's teachers to have instant access to the system from their desktop computers by this year.
Instead, only six of 117 school districts are on line as part of a trial of the system, which is called NC WISE.
And many of the teachers using it don't like it. They say it is difficult to even gain access to the network, much less complete basic tasks such as entering daily attendance information.
(snip) "This project has turned out to be harder, more complex and more expensive than anyone thought," said Bob Bellamy, associate superintendent for accountability and technology for the Department of Public Instruction.
"Training, technical support and software and hardware development all contribute to the price," he said. (snip) A commission that oversees state information technology projects authorized the DPI to go ahead with planning to add the remaining 111 school systems and 100 charter schools statewide.
But the panel, led by State Auditor Ralph Campbell, also demanded additional information about cost, timing and planning.
State schools Superintendent Mike Ward pledged last week to hire a manager, who will report directly to him, to oversee the project. [How much more will that cost, Mike?]
"This is a top priority of the agency, and I will be more closely involved," Ward said.
The Information Resource Management Commission, the panel headed by Campbell, increased its scrutiny in recent months.
"What are we really getting in this major contract for public instruction?" Campbell asked in an interview. "How will it benefit the [local school systems?]" (snip) The project was launched in 1999 with a $54 million contract between the state and the consulting division of PricewaterhouseCoopers. In 2002, IBM bought the consulting arm of the accounting giant and took over the job.
DPI renegotiated a $78 million deal with IBM late last year to complete the project by 2009. Added to the $35 million already spent, that makes the cost more than $110 million.
Bellamy, the associate state superintendent, said anticipated costs outside the contract are likely to push the overall bill to $150 million or more.
Ward blamed PricewaterhouseCoopers for some of the added costs and delays. But Bellamy acknowledged that the DPI has expanded the scope of the project, largely in response to requests from school districts, and asked for additional applications as work has progressed.
The local school districts also face start-up costs connected with the program. One serious problem encountered by the six districts taking part in the trial (Wake County and Chapel Hill-Carrboro are two of the six) has been a lack of wiring capacity to handle all the traffic. [*No one knew they were going to need wires, Mike?*]
Heavy demand on that wiring -- from Internet use in classrooms to e-mail and administrative uses -- has prevented teachers from gaining access. The cost of providing enough wiring to handle the load will be borne mostly by the districts, not the state.
'It's a mess'
Teachers say there are other problems as well with NC WISE.
"It's needlessly complex and complicated. It's not user- friendly," said Bob Brogden, a social studies teacher at East Chapel Hill High. "I use it only to the degree that I have to. I use it to take attendance and enter final-quarter grades."
Dee Skinner, a veteran social studies teacher at Wake Forest-Rolesville High School, spent most of last Monday recomputing fall semester grades for her 85 students because flaws had been discovered in NC WISE's electronic grade-book application. "It's a mess," she said.
State administrators now say they now feel confident that 40 to 50 more school districts can be connected to the system for the 2004-05 academic year. The rest would be added the next year.
Bellamy said enhanced software to fix many of the problems teachers have found will be added before the end of the month.
"Will it be perfect? Probably not," he said. "Will it be dramatically better? Absolutely."
Short of its promise
NC WISE is intended to replace a network known as SIMS, or Student Information Management System, that the schools have used since the 1980s.
"SIMS just counted the number of kids in school, took attendance and said who was taking what courses," Bellamy said. "There was no capacity for comprehensive data analysis."
NC WISE is expected to provide complete data for each student, Bellamy said, allowing teachers to easily review a student's record, from physical or learning difficulties to test scores and discipline issues.
For the state, he said, NC WISE will allow more accurate reporting of graduation statistics and improve the state's capacity to meet the reporting requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind law.
But in practice, teachers say, the system hasn't lived up to its promise.
"I'm sure it's valuable to someone," said Pat Ferrara, a biology teacher at Raleigh's Sanderson High School who concedes she lacks computer skills. "For me, it's a headache."
(Excerpt) Read more at newsobserver.com ...
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As someone who has some experience with projects this size... I don't know where to begin.IMHO, their first mistake was in hiring Pricewaterhouse "Cost Overrun" Coopers. And their appears to be a severe lack of planning and an even greater lack of design.
Granted, it's super easy to sit on the outside and take potshots and we obviously don't know all the ins and outs from reading this article. But this particular example:
The local school districts also face start-up costs connected with the program. One serious problem encountered by the six districts taking part in the trial (Wake County and Chapel Hill-Carrboro are two of the six) has been a lack of wiring capacity to handle all the traffic.shows just a small sample of the poor planning.
Yer tax dollars at work!
Ouch!! That hurts!
And the best part? It costs less for me to send my children there than it costs for the local (Dayton, Ohio) school system to provide a substandard education to one of their pupils. Gotta love government schools.
When IBM comes to the "rescue" with a busload of IBM Global Services Consultants at $300 per hour until sometime in the year 2009, be sure they come with plenty of this:
Regards,
Hat-Trick
I have no idea how this system is configured, but we can take these comments with a grain of salt. After all, this is coming from a group of people who graduated from the Education Department at a university. Many of these folks are arguably dumber than rocks.
One serious problem encountered by the six districts taking part in the trial (Wake County and Chapel Hill-Carrboro are two of the six) has been a lack of wiring capacity to handle all the traffic.
I suspect this is a lack of port capacity, caused by inadequate spec'ing in the original bid. Contractors needed to low bid in order to win the contract, and they would have taken the RFQ at face value, rather than insuring that their bids took additional future needs into account. Re-spec'ing after the fact would definitely add tons of money to the cost. I also suspect they aren't giving the contractors accurate information of their needs even now. CYA in full parade dress.
MOST system development/networking projects are harder, more complex and more expensive than anyone thought. However, when the dust settles, tens of millions more are spent, and the system is eventually declared a success, there will be lots of promotions for those who mismanaged the project.
I often wonder about that myself ... how hard would it be to write a contract, and then insist that all parties do what they've contracted to do?
When Der Prinz comes home with stories to explain why we can't make any plans away from the office ... "Well, the contractor was supposed to ... but their guy didn't show up ... and the one on the phone didn't know anything ... and nobody in my department could ... and blah blah blah Not My Fault, Victim of Circumstances Beyond My Control ..." I always ask, "So, why are you going to pay these people? Doesn't their contract include penalties for the delay in the work, for the additional cost of your employees' time, and for my aggravation?" No, of course not. They're just going to put up with it, and it won't affect whether they contract with the same people again ... it wouldn't be Nerdly to hold them responsible for whether they did the job!
And this is in a for-profit company - you'd think they'd be motivated to get what they pay for.
Since they'd be out of business if they operated like this all the time, I conclude that executives who are competent and cost-conscious in their real line of business are so intimidated by the whole mythos of "Information Technology" that they surrender their judgment to the self-proclaimed experts. They don't really have the capacity to evaluate the qualifications of their own IT employees ... and many of those people have worked or will work in future for the vendors or contractors ... and he (the customer's employee) has no motivation to think of value, because his resume will look better if it says "implemented $200M upgrade" than if it says "$100M upgrade." And a potential future employer is not likely to ask the current one how satisfied they were with the project, either!
So there's an effective conspiracy throughout the industry to inflate costs, confuse benefits, and avoid accountability.
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