December 01, 2005 09:00 AM UTC

Not Another Broken Computer System

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• by: Colorado Pols

Democrats are shaping up for a major confrontation with Governor Bill Owens over a series of boondoggle computer integration contracts.

The allocation and awarding of federally-funded homeland security grants has been shrouded in secrecy imposed from the Governor’s office, which has infuriated Democrats intent on second-guessing his decisions. Recent audits which determined these funds are poorly managed are only exacerbating the tension.

The Colorado Benefits Management System, a $200 million database intended to streamline the processing and awarding of various entitlement benefits, is still not running perfectly after more than a year of operation. This has been a sore point between Democrats and Owens since the moment they retook the legislature, and many of them aren’t satisfied.

And the latest row involves two contracts awarded to Accenture Corporation for new central databases at the Department of Labor and the Secretary of State’s office.

Colorado officials on Wednesday canceled a contract to build a new computer system to track voter registration and have threatened to cancel a second contract with the same company to rework the system the state Labor Department uses to track unemployment benefits.

Efforts to implement both, state officials say, have been fraught with problems, including missed deadlines and serious programming flaws.

We noted previously what seems to be a suspicious relationship between certain high level employees at Labor and State (that is, the same high-level employees) and the awarding of these two contracts to Accenture Corporation. Democrats are adamant that they’ve been kept in the dark while progress on the two projects  essentially ground to a halt. Whatever damage this may do non-lame-duck Republicans (because you know that’s where the Dems want this headed) will depend on what they can prove. It’s possible that Owens, fresh from the alienation of a large segment of his own party, may find himself with very few friends once the full story is told.

From the rhetoric we’re hearing, you’d think the Democrats had just stumbled across Al Capone’s Vaults. We’ll be watching this one closely to see if they do better than Geraldo did.