pinion Letter to the Editor: Egos, Ignorance and Apathy are Costing Manatee County Taxpayers Millions

Local governments and agencies in Manatee County are wasting millions of taxpayer’s dollars on information technology for three simple reasons: the egos, ignorance and apathy of their leaders. These same factors have placed many critical systems in jeopardy. The loss of a single component, site, or person could produce an extended outage or degradation of vital County services.

Disparate information technology systems, software applications and technical staff coupled with a failure to standardize products, services and support, are costing County taxpayers millions of dollars and degrading operational performance and reliability. Unfortunately, for the citizens of Manatee County, the leadership of these local governments or agencies lacks the desire or knowledge to correct this problem. Some may be unaware that a problem even exists.

Today, we all rely on technology. This is especially true for large organizations like the local governments and agencies of Manatee County. Email, internet, wireless communications, financial systems, law enforcement systems, public safety systems, utility operations system, traffic management systems and geographic information (mapping) systems are only a few of the technologies local governments depend on to operate effectively and efficiently.  The many services they provide depend on these systems, so reliability and performance are critical.

It is understandable that our political leaders may lack the technical and financial skills required to develop the plans and strategies needed to reduce costs, improve performance and increase reliability of the vast array of information technology system they depend on, but the fact that they or their staff are unwilling to take action or are unaware that a problem exists is inexcusable. This lack of action by the leadership of these agencies is a violation of their fiduciary responsibility to the public, and ignorance is no excuse.

As examples, there are multiple telephone systems, multiple financial and human resource systems, multiple data communications systems, multiple data centers and multiple data storage systems within these County entities. Each of these systems or sites requires dedicated technical staff to build, operate and maintain them. The result is operational inefficiency, increase cost and lower reliability. Technical and operational solutions exist to solve this growing problem and put the County back on the right path. The only thing preventing this is the willingness of the leadership to do it.

Mike McLaughlin was the Director of the Information Technology Department for Manatee County Government from September 2009 until January 2012.