Senator wants computer dumped

Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2000 | 11:36 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- State Sen. Bill O'Donnell has suggested the state "pull the plug" on Welfare Division's the $125 million computer program rather than spend more money on it.

O'Donnell, R-Las Vegas, considered one of the experts in the Legislature on computers, said Monday there are 200,000 people in welfare programs and "yet we're spending millions and millions and millions of dollars."

"They never see a dime," O'Donnell said. "It all goes to IBM. It's a tragedy."

O'Donnell cast the lone "no" vote on a legislative subcommittee on information technology that approved a $1 million expansion of one of the main state computers on which the welfare program is run.

The computer was part of a $2 million upgrade last month, but Terry Savage, director of the state Department of Information Technology, said the mainframe unit "could go only four to eight weeks without a disaster."

He appeared today before the Legislative Interim Finance Committee, which approved the use of the $1 million in savings to go forward with the expansion project.

The first upgrade improved the efficiency and reduced the waiting time for programmers to make entries, but he said the programmers are putting out a lot more work than anticipated. The welfare computer program, called "NOMADS," uses 50 percent of the mainframe computer, which will be close to capacity soon. Other agencies share time on it.

Assemblywoman Vonne Chowning, D-North Las Vegas, defended NOMADS.

"I hear Clark County is very happy with NOMADS. They have been able to capture more child-support dollars.

"The perception is NOMADS is working and giving good results for the constituents," she said.

NOMADS was developed in response to a federal government order in the late 1980s calling for states to put in a central computer system for collecting child-support payments.

The development of NOMADS has been plagued with delays and cost overruns. What started as a $24 million project has now escalated to $125 million.

"Eventually this thing will go away," O'Donnell said, calling the system a failure. "It's a question of how many more millions of dollars we spend on it."