I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
The New Mexico Secretary of State’s Office doesn’t have the technical capability to manage information technology projects, according to a Legislative Finance Committee (LFC) evaluation.
Nor does it have a “viable disaster recovery” plan for its “mission critical” systems, says the evaluation.
The LFC is the Legislature’s budget arm, and also does program reviews as part of its charge.
Its evaluation was presented to state lawmakers last week at a meeting in Taos of the Legislature’s Science, Technology & Telecommunications Committee.
The review comes on the heels of a series a series of newspaper and Web site articles on agency’s computer problems and, for a time, inaccessible website.
The New Mexico Independent wrote first about the agency’s problems in late June when the secretary of state’s computer systems, as well as its Web site, went dark, leaving the public unable to access the agency’s many services.
The Secretary of State’s Office is home to several services necessary for the public to do all sorts of business, from accessing campaign and lobbyist information to registering trademarks and other dealings between businesses and state government.
Even as the agency’s computer systems went on the blink, IT experts were trying to figure out how much of a new, user-friendly campaign finance reporting system the Secretary of State’s Office had worked on for a year actually worked. The system had been constructed by an in-house developer and agency employee, and originally had been scheduled to go online June 30.
It is unclear now how much of the system works. And a new deadline of October 2009 has been proposed for the campaign reporting system. The office is preparing a contingency plan in case it is not operation by then, the evaluation says.
The in-house developer, Brad Allen, has since been placed on administrative leave and agency officials confirmed earlier this month that an investigation into Allen had started, although originally they said Allen was not under suspicion when the first stories were written.
The LFC evaluation of the Secretary of State’s Office attempted to place the problems in context, noting that the agency is working with antiquated equipment. Of 22 servers, 11 are over five years old and five are over 7 years old, it said.
But ultimately the evaluation found huge gaps in the agency’s IT capabilities, concluding the following:
The SOS IT capability is significantly lacking in staffing and technical skills. Expectations are far greater than the ability of the people resources to deliver the results required and to provide the necessary and required processes to protect the assets of the SOS and the people of the State of New Mexico.
The evaluation also found that the agency failed to effectively communicate as the new campaign finance reporting system was under construction. The evaluation reprints a series of e-mails among secretary of state officials that appear to bear out the point.
“Brad reports 60 – 70% done. DoIT consultant believes more like 5%,” State Elections Director A.J. Salazar wrote to Secretary of State Mary Herrera on June 10 of this year. DoIT is the state Department of Information Technology.
Six days later, Salazar again wrote to Herrera: “Candidate side is not very user friendly. Project is nowhere near completion. I do not recommend having anyone from the outside the organization look at the system in its current state.”
Several days later, the agency computer systems, and the agency’s website, were not working, a situation that was corrected only after days of work by IT experts brought in to help.
