Part I: Glitches marred Tarrant County computer project

By Yamil Berard

yberard@star-telegram.com

First of a three-part series.

Tarrant County taxpayers have poured millions of dollars into digital technology that's been touted as a superstar in the e-gov world.

The software systems, with code names like Phoenix and Death March, are coveted by county officials from all corners of the state, the public has been told. A click of the mouse zips millions of sensitive e-docs to the prosecutor's office, the county courts and jails.

"In my mind, we have one of the best IT departments in the state," County Administrator G.K. Maenius says.

But questionable bidding practices, weak oversight, and cozy relationships between vendors and county employees have marred the county's technology program for years, a Star-Telegram examination found. Documentation is so haphazard that it doesn't show why contractors won bids or detail the work done by vendors to justify payments. Instead, the county put blind faith in a key IT manager who, sometimes on his signature alone, approved scores of invoices, the Star-Telegram found.

That employee is now under indictment for allegedly forging thousands of dollars in travel receipts.

No one is investigating, though, whether contracts were improperly awarded or money misspent, although County Auditor Renee Tidwell warned months ago that oversight was so flawed the county may not be able to detect fraud.

As for the digital take-off of the county's software, technologists and vendors are still working, years later, to get some applications for the ballyhooed Electronic Case Management System off the ground. What's more, some elected officials say the system has been a source of irritation for them because it is clunky and has failed at times.

"I've been on the record a number of times about these failures," District Clerk Tom Wilder said.

Maenius maintains that nothing improper was done and that the criticisms unfairly represent the work of county technologists. "All policy was literally followed," he said.

The head of the IT department, Steve Smith, and County Judge Glen Whitley also reject criticism that oversight was weak and say the system works.

"All of our projects that are multimillion dollar projects [are] very heavily monitored by both the county administrator, myself, purchasing and finance," Smith said.

Maenius says the grousing by county officials is the result of their unreasonable demands as they compete for resources and attention to individual projects.

"It sounds as if we were just flying by the seat of our pants, and that's not true," he said.

Independent computer experts who, at the request of the Star-Telegram, reviewed county documents about the issues say they don't buy his explanation. Bottom line, they say, the overall problems are associated with a failure to follow basic standards in program management.

"There are far too many problems, significant problems that should have raised some eyebrows," said Travis Farral, board member of the Cowtown Chapter of the Information Systems Security Association Inc., which promotes management practices that will ensure the integrity of information resources.

Lack of parameters

Perhaps the most ambitious project by the county IT department was the creation of the Electronic Case Management System for criminal justice records. File cabinets and stuffed briefcases could be banished. Instead, arrest and offense data, booking records, court appearances, photographs and other information would be available online.

"When we started this, no one else in the country ... no government of any size, was doing paperless," said Miles Brissette, a prosecutor who has aided in the development of the software for the district attorney's office.

Initial costs were put at about half a million dollars for what Maenius said was a rudimentary system to enable police to transmit arrest and offense reports to prosecutors. After that, new applications boosted costs and promises about what the system would deliver.

Almost a decade after work started, and $5 million later, the software isn't ready to do what was ultimately promised. "Quite frankly, whenever you're first out of the box, you fail sometimes," Maenius said.

"It was one of the first times that a state government entity was involved in writing its own software for a major product function."

The Star-Telegram examination found that the project began with no scope of any kind, no final budget, no timetable with milestones for work to be completed, no method to track invoices so spending and work accomplishments could be monitored.

"You can't run a project without a scope, a schedule," Farral said.

Without a clearly defined scope, features were constantly being added without any documentation to show consideration of costs, Tidwell said. The project also faltered because county technologists, with little experience creating infrastructure components, didn't realize that the computer system lacked the capacity for the software programs being developed.

Years into development, the system would jam and couldn't store the magnitude of data. Tests showed that thousands of case files had failed to input, according to IT department e-mails.

"We weren't retrieving the data fast enough, the system was built too small," Maenius said. "That's not unusual in this type of development."

Another flaw was the extraordinary authority given to Mark O'Neal, the county's senior program manager for the work.

He essentially selected vendors, signed off that work was completed, authorized changes in the scope of projects and approved millions of dollars of invoices on his signature alone, records obtained under the Texas Public Information Act show.

Accounting rules to prevent fraud say that a person who requisitions purchases should not be the same one who approves the purchase. Nor should the person approving purchases also be approving checks. Yet O'Neal did all that.

The invoices also lacked details about the spending, which Tidwell said is contrary to good practices.

O'Neal wrote the request for proposal that established the guidelines for expanding the pipeline -- the amount of digital information that can be transmitted -- and selected the vendor who matched the guidelines. How he made that decision is unclear because project files did not include an evaluation of bidders, as policy requires. Score sheets were mostly blank and lacked signatures of those who did the evaluation, records show.

On his advice, the county chose XPedient Technologies to fix the pipeline problem and annually renewed its contract to modify the software system.

At one point, when contract money on XPedient's project was tapped out, O'Neal shifted payments to another company on the state's list of approved vendors, rather than seek county commissioners' consent for a change order -- circumventing county policy.

That company paid XPedient employees hundreds of thousands more for work the county had contracted with XPedient to do, an audit found.

Tidwell began raising questions about the mushrooming spending, as did some defense attorneys.

The attorneys were miffed because they had paid about $80,000 to have their own IT contractor provide access to the case management system, said Bill Ray, former president of the Tarrant County Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. Yet when work was completed, and Ray saw the invoices, he found that the county had spent about $108,000 on the work and two other IT projects.

The mystery to Ray is what exactly the county paid for. He asked for a breakdown and was told none was available.

Maenius said that Ray isn't considering Tarrant's cost for the work.

"They did put money in," he said. "In order to do that, we had to spend money on our side to position our system so they could do it."

But Ray said that without itemized invoices, it is impossible to know what work was actually done. Invoices showed only that contractors were paid an hourly rate of $80 to $130 for professional services.

"They don't know if the money was for raising the flag or washing patrol cars," Ray said. "It's public money. They should have done a better job of policing it."

Nor was there supporting documentation for why XPedient's contract should be renewed each year. Tidwell said county commissioners approved new contracts on O'Neal's recommendation.

"There was little or no oversight that we found that was truly knowledgeable of what this employee was doing," she said.

O'Neal could not be reached for comment, and his attorney, Jim Lane, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Dalton Franklin, chief operating officer with XPedient, said that the county monitored the software project by reviewing the software every two weeks. The software was demonstrated to both IT officials and the district attorney's office before invoices were submitted, Franklin said.

The company has not done any additional product development for the county since May, he wrote in response to Star-Telegram questions.

Whitley also said there was proper documentation and oversight of the spending. "The DA signed off for this, and there were a lot of sign-offs at the IT department," he said.

To this day, Maenius defends O'Neal, who he described as the go-to man on technology projects countywide.

O'Neal had so much knowledge about the case management system that other county officials would bypass his higher-up, Smith, to enlist O'Neal's advice, Maenius said. "I worked with him way too many times and know how good he is, how much value he's added to this organization," Maenius said.

Critical audit

Last year, O'Neal's cyber-star took a dive. He was terminated after a forensic audit found pornography on his county laptop. Then Tidwell released a damning audit about development of the case management system. Among the findings, she wrote that none of the applications XPedient developed was in use.

This spring, O'Neal and his wife were indicted for allegedly fabricating lodging receipts while on county business. Auditors found that between August 2008 and August 2010, O'Neal had sought reimbursement of $210 to $270 a night for staying in a resort timeshare owned by his wife. Previously he had been reimbursed almost $3,000 for stays between August 2005 and April 2008 at the same property.

The audit pinned blame on Maenius and Smith for giving full authority to O'Neal. County Commissioner Roy Brooks also said the two men sat at the "epicenter where this thing went wrong," describing the situation as a "failure of leadership."

Maenius acknowledged the county did not do a sufficient job in providing clear parameters early on. But he said he had depended on technology experts for guidance. "There was an element of trust that had developed between our entity and XPedient, and Mark was our point person on that," he said.

Smith said it wasn't his fault, noting that O'Neal's word carried a heavy weight.

"He was very highly trusted in our organization," Smith said. "Trust is a very delicate tool. If you trust people and you do a very good job, you're [considered] very smart. If you don't trust people to do a very good job, you have to hire people to watch them. I don't subscribe to that method."

Maenius said he "disciplined" Smith for the oversight snafus but said stronger action wasn't warranted because software development itself has not been under scrutiny. He also noted that Smith, who earns $165,480 a year, has won state awards, "which is a big thing." However, Smith's performance reviews in recent years criticized him for a lack of focus on internal IT issues, including ensuring that projects were properly executed.

Smith announced this summer that he will retire in January, when he vests with a full county pension.

Maenius said vendors are now required to provide time sheets listing contract hours, work tasks performed and accomplishments. The county also requires multiple signatures from IT officials on invoices. But he bristles at some of the harsh criticism.

It appeared "like we were pushing money and didn't know what we were getting," he said. "We knew what we were getting. We just didn't do as good as we could in detailing it."

As for the money paid to another vendor when contract money to XPedient was tapped out, Maenius says the amount is the same XPedient would have been paid.

The flaw was that O'Neal took a "shortcut," Maenius said.

"It wasn't illegal," he said. But he added, "We don't take shortcuts like that anymore."

Yamil Berard, 817-390-7705

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