By George Volsky
georgevolsky@aol.com

When earlier this year an organization called the Technological Association of America (TAA) came into being the event was unnoticed by virtually all local residents. Yet TAA’s birth, the result of a merger of the American Electronics Association of America with the Information Technology (I.T.) Association, is relevant for Coral Gables. According to analysts of the nation’s electronics sector, the merger (shedding the word “information”) means that the three-decade long “information technology” fad – especially of the sort introduced here in 2002 –   undergoes its terminal tremors.

Originally, I.T. specialists were basically engineers. They built things. Later they operated equipments and systems that others had built, sold or rented. They also claimed that they could streamline operations and reduce costs by making enterprises leaner. But, like in our I.T. Department, most I.T. “experts” have become well-paid bureaucratic automatons, whose duties could easily be performed, with considerable savings, by other employees, in a crunch even by teenagers.

In the current and rapidly changing electronics profession, the arrogant mystique of being indispensable “I.T. analysts,” “I.T. systems analysts” or “systems specialists” is gone. We have 17 of these “experts,” paying them more than $1.1 million a year, plus $675,733 in benefits, and $123,000 for unspecified “professional services.” 

Today elementary school children know more about computers than their grandparents. High school students routinely repair their laptops. Not surprisingly, the world-wide I.T. sector has gone from servicing equipment back to producing and selling better electronic implements and systems. The sector’s leaders have realized that innovation produces higher dividends at home and abroad. The industry is gearing for a new technological cycle, trajectory spurred by efforts to simplify new electronics programs.

As a result, all over the country corporate I.T. departments have either been scrapped or drastically reduced, narrowing their personnel to a few “troubleshooters.”  Brigit van Kralingen, head of IBM global services division, has put it succinctly:  “We’re seeing a closing and consolidation of I.T. projects and a beefing up of the big ones.” Industry leading companies, among them IBM, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard or Microsoft, now focus on online subscription of I.T. services for businesses and municipalities.

There is a talk in City Hall that our Information Technology Department will be drastically overhauled and cut to the bone. Hopefully it will happen. The move is necessary not only because the electronic culture is changing on the highest corporate level, but because our economic woes demand it.  It is unjust, to say the least, that the city commission punishes taxpayers for its disastrous policies during the years of plenty, when a huge revenue stream should have produced equally large budgetary surpluses. Instead, our monetary bonanza prompted wasteful spending and a number of unsound and financially draining investments.

Like all Coral Gables homeowners, this week I received two letters: my real estate property tax and the city’s “fire protection assessment.” The first showed an increase of exactly 12.5 percent over 2008. Factoring in the $50 fire fee and higher waste collection charges, this Fiscal Year I’ll have to pay the city 18 percent more in taxes and charges than last year. And, come January, my Social Security check will not increase one penny.

For years, many experienced and thoughtful city officials, and lower level employees, when asked about our I.T. Department, have been reporting its inefficiency, studious secrecy (the department is located in the police H.Q building) and its arrogance.  And there are many other, virtually daily derogatory reports of an anecdotic sort.

Discarding all of that, I went to the city’s 2009-2010 budget to find the truth, or its semblance – numbers after all do not confirm or deny arrogance, contumely or intrigue-mongering. (All I.T. Department appropriations enumerated here come from the budget’s detailed estimate, published July 1. In the final, detail-less budget, presented to the city commission on Sept. 28, I.T. received $9,139 more money.)

In the FY that began Oct. 1, the I.T. Department has $4.7 million to spend. Of that $2,108,996 goes for the salaries and personal expenses of its 17 employees. (That includes a $4,500 car allowance for I.T. director, called “Chief Information Officer,” and $56,207 to drive around the 16 other I.T. people, or a whopping $300 per person per month.)

The largest non-personal budgetary figure is $1,134,234 for telephone service, money paid by the city to one or several telephone service suppliers. Next comes $350,440 for “lease equipment,” comprising payments to outside entities, as is $8,320 for “rental of machinery and equipment.” For years, I.T. has been a big purchaser, but not during this “lean” fiscal year. This time I.T. got “only” $244,400 to spend, mostly it appears, for personal mini-laptops, blackberries and such. No IT “expert” could be seen around City Hall without one.

For “repair & maintenance of office equipment” I.T. got $841,510, and for “repair and maintenance of machinery and equipment” a pittance of $1,000. The rest of funds in the department’s budget is for items such as personal liability ($62,297); rental of city facilities ($26,061); and office supplies ($7,245). There is one “huge” saving in the current I.T. budget. Last FY, the department spent $500 for “food for human consumption;” this year that is gone.

What do the above numbers tell us? First, the cost of personnel justifying I.T.’s existence is enormous. Nobody pays $2.1 million to 17 people to operate the other $2.5 million from the $4.6 million budget. Actually, we give the 17 “experts” $2.1 million, plus $845,510 – that’s close to $3 million, or $176,000 per person per year (unless someone else pockets the $845,510), to service just one electronic accounting system, EDEN.

I.T. “experts” have been working on EDEN for years, yet there is not a single person in City Hall, perhaps not even in I.T., who believes that the off-the-shelf system works efficiently and can be made to perform according to city requirements.

The rest of the budget, $1.5 million for rental equipment and about $250,000 for new purchases, represents simple transfers of funds from the Finance Department to providers of services and suppliers. In both of these categories I.T. has little to do. Its function consists of informing the Finance’s Purchasing Division what equipment and services it needs, and Purchasing researches the best and least expensive firms that sell or provide them.   

Independent information technology experts, interviewed for this column, are of two minds. One advocates that the city eliminate I.T. Department altogether and employ outside consultants instead. The other advises that Coral Gables retain a five or six person I.T. office, comprising roving “troubleshooters” to fix EDEN and electronic problems the best they can. Both experts estimated that in a city of 45,000 like ours the cost of I.T. services should not exceed $2 million, thus saving about $2.5 million.

Preserving the present I.T. bureaucratic set up, they said, would mean continuing the status quo in which 17 persons are doing very little for taxpayers forced to pay their exorbitant salaries.