Remember the day your cursor froze at work and
the computer guy hired just a few days earlier promised that
everything would be fine? Just a few more minutes, he promised, as he
sat at your desk typing madly while you got a cup of coffee. Then
another cup. And another. An hour later, you finally thought that
you were back in business, only to discover that your e-mail
didn’t work anymore. This sort of thing won’t happen to state
workers or the public, the state of Illinois vows, when state
employees replace hundreds of computer-services contractors whose
contracts will be terminated on Dec. 31. “Absolutely, positively no,”
proclaims Becky Carroll, spokeswoman for the governor’s
budget office, when asked whether there’s any chance a
computer meltdown will hit when the private sector turns computer
systems over to government employees. “I have had a couple of
conversations with folks who are pretty involved with all this.
They’re fairly comfortable that they’ll make a smooth
transition. Agencies have been searching diligently for qualified
candidates. Overall, the transition should be pretty
smooth.”
“Fairly” comfortable? At least one
outgoing contractor isn’t comfortable at all. John Kruger, a consultant who’s losing
his contract to oversee databases at the Department of Human
Services, says that switching from contractors to in-house computer
geeks is like switching engineers midjourney on a train
that’s running on time. The stakes are high. “Any database is the heart of any company or
agency,” Kruger says. “It houses all the vital information
about the programs and the people who applied for and received
benefits. For someone who’s really knowledgeable [about
computers], it takes a minimum of three months to get them started and
six months to get them comfortable.” The state recently put on the state payroll a
contractor who had been key in keeping DHS databases up to snuff,
so that agency should be OK, Kruger predicts. However, computer
systems at several other agencies, including Central Management
Services, Commerce and Economic Opportunity, Children and Family
Services, Employment Security, Natural Resources, and the Illinois
State Police, are changing hands. Some contract employees who have
no-compete clauses in their contracts are forbidden from
immediately taking state jobs, Kruger says. The switch has been years in the making, says
Anders Lindall, spokesman for the American Federation of State,
County and Municipal Employees, which represents about 37,000 state workers. The union and the
state in 1993 agreed to hire state workers to replace contractors,
Lindall says, but a firm deadline of Dec. 31 wasn’t set until
contract negotiations were completed in 2004. “The union said,
‘Let’s set a deadline for when this can get cleaned
up,’ ” Lindall explains. “The state said, ‘How
about 18 months from now?’ The state has been aware of this
timetable of their own choosing.” All told, slightly more than 900 contractors
will be replaced by 600 state employees, Carroll says. However, the
state won’t save any money, she says.
The switch is obviously good for the union,
which will walk away with a larger bargaining unit. Lindall says
that contractors tend to make less money than state workers, and
the state also doesn’t pay for benefits such as health
insurance and pensions. Lindall says that the deal is also good for
taxpayers because it will make state government more efficient and
accountable. “I see it as a win-win situation for
everyone,” he says. Kruger says that he doesn’t think
he’ll have much trouble finding a new job, but he scoffs at
the notion that the change will make government more efficient.
“The union wants more heads, and this is the way
they’re going to get them,” he says. “Other than
that, I don’t understand why they’re doing it.
It’s political, and I’m not into politics that
much.”
This article appears in Dec 29, 2005 – Jan 4, 2006.
