Our TEAM sucks…
It’s great to get some linkage from Kuff, one of my favorites. The Texas Elections Administration Management System (TEAM) has turned into a bit of a clusterf*&K and many of the counties who signed on are howling about the problems it is creating. Kuff reflects on the reasonableness of Harris County Tax Assessor and chief voter registrar Paul Bettencourt, a critic of the TEAM system:
I certainly don’t consider Paul Bettencourt to be an unbiased source, but as Harris has never experienced the kind of problems that other counties saw this month, he’s got the better of the argument. Databases can be tricky beasts, and especially for something like this it’s really important to get it right. I don’t see why TEAM can’t be made to work – it’s not like IBM is some fly-by-night outfit, after all – but someone needs to light a fire under the current Secretary of State to make it happen by next March.
I’m glad there are those like Kuff to stay calm and collected so people like PDiddie and myself can fly off the handle a bit… have no fear, I’m merely disgusted, not outraged about this issue, so far.
Let’s start with Bettancourt. Was he ahead of the curve on this? If you look strictly at the number of Texas counties that have adopted the Hart-IBM TEAM database, it looks impressive…227 counties out of the 254 in Texas are using the TEAM database… however:
Travis and Williamson counties, like many other populous counties, have chosen not to switch to the new state system…
Most of the 27 counties that did not switch over are the more populous counties in the state.
“We thought it was best to stand back and let TEAM system work out all the bugs,” said Danny Clayton, a Dallas County supervisor of voter registration. “Once TEAM system is working like it should, we’ll take another look at it.”
So, Mr. Bettencourt wasn’t alone in being extremely leery of the TEAM system. Hell, the TEAM system might not even cover half the population yet. Can you blame any politician for not wanting a reputation riding on somebody else’s performance? And Mr. Bettancourt certainly walks and quacks like a politician ( think “facts are fungible”). I’m sure alot of IT guys are all about sticking with an existing system until you can prove the new one works. Here’s how some of the other counties feel about the TEAM system and how it affects their jobs:
Travis County Voter Registration Director Dolores Lopez said it recently took county workers the better part of two days to verify information in 100 voter records using the state system — something the county’s internal system can do in about 30 minutes.
Lamar County weighs in at about 50,000 people:
In Lamar County Texas Tricia Johnson, a deputy clerk in charge of elections said she entered at least 60 registration cards collected from the local Texas Department of Public Safety office following the April 12 deadline.
“With the old system, we could get in about 100 people in a day but with this new system we are lucky to get in 20 people a day,” Johnson said.
Those are some suck-ass productivity stats. Thanks TEAM! Galveston County has almost 300,000 people:
“TEAM has adversely impacted productivity in the Galveston County voter registrar’s office as well as negatively impacted many of our voters,” she said. “This has been very hard. This is enough to get me thrown out of office.”
I’ve followed the tech industry from varying distances for a long time, and I would normally be the first to go along with the nobody-ever-got-fired-for-using-IBM credo. If anybody could get a big db working you’d think it would be them… but this has got politics rubbed all over it, and the only analogy I can think of is a dirty diaper… so even Big Blue has it’s limitations, and I don’t like the direction my, uh, investigation, is heading.
Also consider that this is a $14 million contract – a mere 14 million, if you’re IBM. I doubt even an AVP would lose a stock option over a problem with this one. Size matters.
More to follow…
