The Secretary of State’s race is definitely one to watch.

First, it’s a very important agency. Secondly, Duran brings with her candidacy a familiarity with state election law and codes. Duran, like Herrera, was a county clerk for a time. County clerks are the local experts on state election law and codes because they run local elections. Herrera was Bernalillo County Clerk before winning the Secretary of State’s office in 2006. Duran served 25 years in the Otero County Clerk’s office, including four years as the county clerk there.

Training will also be available Friday, April 30, at the San Juan Community College in Farmington (Room 7126) from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Trujillo said.

The Santa Fe training will be offered at the Secretary of State’s office, 325 Don Gaspar (Suite 300) next Wednesday. Appointments may be made for times between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m., Trujillo said.

Next Friday, May 7, training will be held at the Clovis Community College (Room 170), 417 Schepps Blvd. in Clovis, from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. and from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

For additional information and to register, contact Hari Singh at hari.singh@state.nm.us or (505) 795-5871 (505) 795-5871.

Trujillo did not know who has not yet filed, he said.

“We have 683 candidates who have filed and are in the system, and 96 political action committees,” Trujillo said. “Another 39 have passwords and are actively getting their data into the system, but haven’t hit ‘submit’ yet. To the best of our knowledge, there are no candidates who have yet to get passwords.”

Staff will match up the candidates’ list with campaign system submissions on Friday, Trujillo said.

“We may have some stragglers, but we won’t know until we check manually (Friday),” he said.

Twenty-five candidates have filed reports using Excel spreadsheets instead of the new system’s graphic interface, Trujillo said. Staff are currently integrating those into the new system.

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.

Photo by Justin Marty/Flickr

The New Mexico Secretary of State’s Office has opened an investigation into an employee placed on leave nearly two weeks ago.

Brad Allen, an information technology employee, was put on leave June 24.

The inquiry comes in the wake of a security test IT experts underway on a new campaign finance system database that Allen had been working on for the past year.

Deputy Secretary of State Don Francisco Trujillo II confirmed Monday that the agency had started an inquiry into Allen based on information gleaned by the security test.

Trujillo did not mention Allen by name but acknowledged that the inquiry involves the only agency employee who is on paid leave, which is Allen. Previously the agency had said that Allen was not under suspicion despite being on leave.

When asked if the investigation involved law enforcement, Trujillo said, “We have begun an investigation which involves other agencies. I won’t discuss it any further.”

Allen said in an interview he was told at the Secretary of State’s office Monday morning that he would remain on paid administrative leave until the completion of an investigation. He said he did not find out what he was being investigated for despite having asked three times.

“This is total guessing, but I think that they are trying to cover themselves,” Allen said. “I think they are for political reasons trying to blame this is on someone. … It seems strange that they have me off two weeks, and today they start the investigation.”

The inquiry is the latest chapter in the agency’s troubles over the past two weeks that has involved its computer systems and website. The agency’s website was offline for more than a week, leading the agency to contract with outside IT experts who worked furiously to restore the agency’s computer systems.

The Secretary of State’s office includes systems that are 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.

Trujillo said Monday that most of the agency’s computer systems were back up and running.

It is unclear how the agency’s troubles and the new database Allen had been working on are related.

Allen had been tasked over the past year with building a new searchable campaign finance reporting database for the Secretary of State’s office, which would include reports filed by political candidates, elected officials, lobbyists and other public officials.

The agency’s current campaign finance reporting system does not allow the public to sift through information but requires users to pull up reports and then manually find data.

The new database would allow the public to determine, for example, what political candidates a person had given to by typing in a contributor’s name. Currently, a public user must go from report to report adding up the contributions.

Part of the work done by outside IT experts over the past two weeks has included trying to determine how much of the new system was built, Trujillo said. The consultants still had not determined whether a part of the system was completed that would allow political candidates to input their information.

Allen, for his part, said that he built the database and that he sent it out to several individuals in New Mexico.

“That’s the only proof that I have that I did the work,” Allen said Monday. “I don’t know what is going on.”

A note on the newly restored Web site acknowledges that systems that are 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, are still down.

“ATTENTION UCC & CAMPAIGN FINANCE REPORTING USERS!” the message states. “Please do not file your UCC filings as our system is down for maintenance at this time. Our Campaign Filing System is also down at this time. Thank you for your patience.”

The note on the Web site gives no timeline for the return of those systems. Secretary of State Mary Herrera and two top officials in her office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Officials have been working to restore the Web site and systems in the office since last week, when unspecified problems knocked out a new campaign finance and disclosure system that has been under development. Officials haven’t specified how the problems with the new site relate to the office’s problems with its other computer systems and Web site.