The Chron’s Carolyn Feibel reports that SimDesk has shut down:
SimDesk Technologies, the company that provided online computer applications to Houston residents through a controversial contract with the city, has gone out of business.
The service was shut down Thursday, according to the company’s Web site and an e-mail circulated to customers. No one answered the phone at the company on Thursday.
At the behest of former Mayor Lee Brown, the city awarded SimDesk a $9.5 million contract in 2002 with the hopes that the service would help bridge the “digital divide.”
Residents without home computers could use SimDesk at public library computers to create and store documents online.
The Brown administration also touted the potential savings at City Hall, suggesting as many half of city work stations could be replaced with SimDesk, enabling the city to cut its computer hardware costs. Although the city had a few employees try the system, it did not work out, and no employees currently use SimDesk, according to Richard Lewis, the city’s director of information technology.
[snip]
Mayor Bill White re-examined the SimDesk contract after winning office and chose to renegotiate it. SimDesk failed some performance tests, explained Lewis.
As part of the amended contract, the city stopped paying SimDesk in 2004, having paid only $2.5 million on the contract. SimDesk agreed to continue providing the service to 800,000 public users until 2010.
But no more than 30,000 people ever used SimDesk through the city’s contract, Lewis said.
The Chron has a correction to the story:
A story on Friday’s page B1 misstated the number of recent users of SimDesk Technologies’ online products. The actual figure, according to the city of Houston’s technology director, was 145.
145!
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