The state spent $13.88 million on what was dubbed the "FAST" project to replace an out-of-date computer system in the state Highways Division, but the new system still doesn’t work, and Gov. David Ige finally stepped in last month to cancel the project.
The official name of the project was the Financial Accounting System Transportation, and Ige said Thursday the problems with the system are "typical how a lot of state projects have been conducted in the past."
The state has a history of over-reliance on consultants, Ige said, with departments hiring consultants to develop specifications, develop requests for proposals, evaluate the proposals that vendors submit, manage projects and more.
"A lot of those things I think we are looking at how we change it on a going-forward basis because you end up with projects like this where we have spent … millions of dollars, and we have nothing to show for it," he said.
The FAST project was first initiated in 2007 to replace a 30-year-old mainframe computer system that handled accounting for the state Department of Transportation Highways Division. Among other improvements, it was supposed to automate the division’s project and financial reporting requirements, improve cash flow by filing for federal highway funding on a weekly basis, and reduce the likelihood of data errors.
In 2008 the state hired Ciber Inc., a global information technology consulting company, under a contract worth more than $8.12 million to design, develop and deploy the FAST system — work that was supposed to be completed in 18 months.
A long list of problems followed, according to a summary of events provided by the state Department of Transportation. Testing of system elements either was not completed or resulted in failure, and federal highway officials would not certify the new system. Efforts to launch the system failed or were aborted, according to the summary provided by state officials.
State officials extended the deadlines for Ciber, and the original contract was increased to $10.9 million, but the system still didnʻt function properly, and it failed another review by the Federal Highways Administration in 2013.
The project stalled in 2013 amid disputes over payments and performance issues, and the state hired another consultant, Gartner Consulting, to review the entire effort, get it back on track and manage the completion of FAST.
Ige credited Senate President Donna Mercado Kim with drawing attention to many of the problems with the FAST project.
Kim said problems with this project and others prompted lawmakers to shift funding for information technology to the Office of Information Management and Technology under the Governorʻs Office "to make sure that these kinds of things hopefully will not occur again in the future."
Gartner was eventually paid $1.521 million, and a third consultant, BEI, was paid $5.485 million, for its work on the project, according to records provided by Kimʻs office.
Ciber Inc. was paid $6.876 million and is seeking additional payments it says it is owed for the project.
Ige said he finally canceled the project after Transportation Director Ford Fuchigami advised him that "it didnʻt make sense for us to go ahead and spend any more money on this until we could really figure out whether the contractor was in a position to complete or not."
Ige said an assessment is being done to determine what work was completed on FAST, what can be salvaged from the project and what is the best way forward.
Last month Ige announced he was canceling another major information technology project, the Enterprise Resource Planning project, which was intended to replace existing systems for managing payroll, attendance, budgeting and grant management. That project was also known as the "Statewide Unified Resource Framework," or SURF, initiative.
Ige’s office announced the state had canceled its request for proposals for the SURF project because the proposals submitted by vendors for the effort were all too expensive.
The state spent $10.8 million developing that request for proposals and performing related research and studies, and spent another $321,303 on related legal costs, according to OIMT.
However, state officials say the money spent on the SURF request for proposals was not wasted because the state can pursue smaller, more manageable pieces of the SURF initiative in the next two years.
