Nevada lawmakers question contracting of out-of-state firms

Friday, Oct. 15, 1999 | 1:34 a.m.

Nevada lawmakers who operate computer businesses say they are disturbed by reports of problems with large state and county computer systems.

They blame it on the policy of hiring outside firms instead of training government employees with computer aptitude to install and maintain the systems.

"The state pays a lot of money to hire these contractors when we can hire qualified people to do the same work," said state Sen. Bill O'Donnell, R-Las Vegas, who owns a computer company. "And they would be state employees who could be disciplined or fired if they didn't do a proper job.

"The problem is that the state has trouble accepting the fact that we will have to pay these programmers high salaries. However, we already are paying millions of dollars to the consulting companies that hire the programmers."

O'Donnell said one reason the state and counties hire high-priced consultants instead of using their own employees is to insulate themselves against liability: "The state gets to point the finger at someone else -- the contractor -- if something goes wrong."

O'Donnell said new large computer systems like the Department of Motor Vehicle and Public Safety's Genesis and Clark County Family Court's Tracs are "extremely prone to mistakes." If an in-house worker does not know the workings of the system, the outside contractor has a lot of control when it comes to correcting the glitches.

"What I would do is not contract with an outside company, but instead build up my own data processing center, hire and train my own employees and pay commensurate salaries -- in other words, have pride of ownership," O'Donnell said.

The reports of troubles with the Genesis and Tracs computers -- installed by the same vendor at a combined cost of more than $55 million -- is the latest in a series of Nevada's major computer problems.

The federal-state-county linked NOMADS computer that monitors the Nevada welfare and child support systems already has cost the state more than $100 million because of repairs needed to mend significant problems.

Assemblyman Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, the president of a computer consulting firm, says Nevada would be much better off purchasing and modifying proven systems from other states than trying to lead the way by innovating new systems that can be flawed and costly to fix.

"No question some other state one day will buy Genesis and experience one-tenth of the problems Nevada has had -- and at half the cost -- because we will have worked out all of the bugs," Beers said.

Beers, whose wife, Sarah, works for Clark County Family Court Services but is not involved with Tracs, said at her job she utilizes a small computer system that was developed in-house and runs well.

Beers recommends that if the state is to continue to award contracts to consultants it should require "defined stopping points" where state officials can check the progress of the project, approve continuation of the work and then pay a portion of the money to the contractor.