The Chronicle‘s Alexis Grant reports that the city’s fancy new municipal courts technology still isn’t working properly:
City officials, at their wit’s end with the company they hired to turn municipal courts into an electronic operation, this week threatened to sue unless the company fixes problems with the $10 million system.
Aside from causing headaches for city officials overseeing the transition, the flawed system has resulted in longer waits for the thousands of residents, lawyers and bail bondsmen who navigate the courts each day, and frustration for those who work there.
The city is giving Maximus Inc. until Thursday to provide a plan for making its work meet expectations.
“We said, ‘It’s really up to you Maximus. You tell us how you’re going to keep Houston as a long-term client, how you’re going to satisfy all your requirements, or we’re going to declare you in default,” said Richard Lewis, the city’s director of information technology.
Repeated calls to Maximus for comment this week were not returned. In the past, spokeswoman Rachael Rowland has said the company was working to fix system bugs.
The computer upgrade, a goal of city officials since the late ’90s, was supposed to be completed within a year and a half after the City Council approved the contract in April 2003. More than four years later, it still is not working properly.
These sorts of problems contribute to our skepticism when the same municipal officials promise to form public-private partnerships for ambitious aims like “Bridging the [Alleged] Digital Divide.”
