Travis County Commissioners Court

August 7, 2012 - Item 14
Agenda

14, consider and take appropriate action regarding an interim CIO, RFS 06032012, including:
a. whether to interview the top recommended candidate and when;
b. whether to authorize the purchasing agent to engage in further contract negotiations with the Lucas Group for interim CIO and IT assessment services; and/or
c. direct human resources to recruit for a permanent county executive for information technology services.

>> And we have our purchasing agent.

>> Good afternoon, judge, Commissioners, cyd grimes, purchasing agent.
Back in June, the court exempted the procurement of recruitment firm to help us find an interim chief information officer.
We have gone through that process.
And the op team and us and some folks from its interviewed three individuals from a group and we've brought forth one for y'all to interview, if that's the course that you want to continue down.
This person that we will put forth to the court to interview if you would like has agreed to come in for six to nine months, act as the interim cio and also to do the assessment that we had originally issued a proposal for, so this person would do the interim work, he would also work with internal staff of its to go ahead and do the assessment that we had talked about doing and he has agreed to stay for up to nine months.
He does not want to stay past that date.
He thinks that he can do the work in six to nine months.
We were able to negotiate a not to exceed amount of $375,000 for him to do that work and act as an interim cio.
We think that price is about comparable to hiring a firm to do the assessment and a cio.
So we think the money is basically about the same.
So at your direction, if you would like us to move forward with an interim cio, we can have that person here next week for you all to interview.
As you know, you all appointed three staff last week to act as the interim director for its.
So it's up to y'all where you all want to go at this point in time.
We do recommend whether we hire this interimiy or not, that you the court go ahead and start the proper he is to hire a permit cio.
So we have been working on this project for many, many months.
We have thought of everything that we could possibly think of.
We have interviewed a lot of folks.
This is where we are at this point in time.
Mr. Harlow is gone, we have three staff acting as interim cio.
So we have an option available for you to hire to hire an interim for the six to nine months, do the assessment you talked about originally wanting us to do or we could do something different.
So it's really up to the court's direction on how you all want us to proceed.

>> Commissioner Huber?

>> Several questions.
First of all, I would like to know who submitted this agenda request coming from Commissioner Eckhardt and myself, as a subcommittee of the court when I did not see it at all, I can't speak for Eckhardt.
But I would not have agreed with the breakdown on these agenda items in a request.
So I'm just curious who submitted this?

>> Well, it's sort of been a group effort.
We had talked about, I had wanted to come to court I believe two weeks ago, you and the Commissioner Eckhardt were out just sort of brief them on where you had directed us.
The judge wanted you all to wait to come back to be here, so it's sort of -- the judge and I and agenda setting meeting talked about this.
We are without -- we are without a cio, we wanted to move forward.
The judge and I talked about this and he and I kind of wordsmithed the wording.

>> Well, we are the subcommittee of the court, if you want to put this on from purchasing for a briefing that's one thing.
Don't put my name on it when I haven't even seen it.
Secondly I'm going to need at least another week on this.
I would request two weeks because of budget hearings and the move.
But this -- this asset out today as you've been talking about it, heard about it yesterday afternoon, is not what I left town on vacation two weeks ago understanding where we were headed.

>> Commissioner Eckhardt?
Were you about to give comments?

>> [laughter]

>> Or just thinking.

>> I'm just thinking.

>> I'm thinking and talking.

>> [laughter]

>> Okay.

>> Now, when I realized mr. Harlow was leaving on the 15th, I put on the agenda on the 14th an item to appoint the three top managers as interim directors because I didn't think the department should be left without one.
At the same time it seemed to me that we should go ahead and move on a permanent decision.
My own view is that this is too much money for too short of a time and probably too much work for one person.
So I would be -- I am responsible for part of the agenda wording.
My own view is that what we ought to do is focus more on making the permanent decision in 14 c.
And I would do that and I would try to get somebody in here on a permanent basis on not only work in the department but also conduct whatever additional assessments need to be made.
That person will be the high salaried employee.
Another county executive, which I think we decided previously and we did revise the job description, didn't we?
I know we discussed it, we can revise it further if we want to.

>> I think --

>> We talked about bringing that back to you before we would actually embark on a search.

>> I guess, you know, it's laudable that this person would try to limit his time to six months.
But at the same time he is from the private sector, has not worked in this capacity in a public position before.
Whether we like it or not, it takes some time to get acclimated to the public sector.
I think it will take him 45 to 60 days just to get used to working at the county.
That would leave him a little bit more than four months.
The other -- the other thing is that this person is a resident of houston and he has committed to being here physically four days a week, right.
Monday through Thursday.
As often thereafter as we need him.
But I think the commitment really is he will be hear four days and whatever additional work he needs to take with him back home he would do that.
At this level it's probably not uncommon.
But I would feel a whole lot better eyeballing this person every day.
At least five stays a week, Monday through -- five days a week, Monday through Friday.
To fill it permanently will require a substantial investment of money.
But if you hire a person as you make the investment, you have some notion that the person may be here indefinitely.
Whereas with the consultant you are spending a pretty penny realizing that that person would be gone in six to nine months.
So the more I thought about this, the more convinced I became is that we really ought to fill this position on a permanent basis.
To be honest, the rate of compensation did help me make that decision.
That's a lot of money, just under $40,000 a month.
I'm not saying the person is not worth it.
I'm not saying in my view this person is not worth it to Travis County.
Not in this capacity, I think we ought to try to maximize the benefit of the three top managers, we ought to post this job permanently, our goal ought to be to take our time and fill it but to fill it as soon as we can.
If we need to revise the job description, we ought to have that on the agenda, next week, if we need two weeks to do that, you know, take whatever time we need.
So I mean I think we need to look at the job description even if we do this, right?
Because when we bring in a consultant, we would still post a permanent position.
That is the thinking, right?

>> Let me -- may I offer up some of the discussion that's taking place because -- because -- I have to say that this has been an extremely long process, because we have had any number of other distractions through the last year and a half on this, which is unfortunate.
But unfortunate for it, hanging out there, they want this assessment.
But the point that -- that has been discussed that I think is really important for us to consider here is first of all, we're -- we're in a really big catch up mode at the county.
As it relates to it, both in the way the organization is structured and the investments that we have.
Those are huge, huge, huge dollar items and we're way behind the eight ball in keeping up with that.
So we are going to be looking at some point unfortunately in catching up and dealing with these dollars.
A secondly, in looking at what to hire the permanent cio, there's -- there's one of the issues that's been discussed or points of view that's been discussed is the fact that we don't really, until we've had the assessment, know where the strengths and weaknesses are in this department.
If we're going to hire a permanent cio, we need a basic understanding of what really needs are from a job description standpoint and be able to focus on those when we hire this cio.
I know I have been a part of the thought that felt like we should get an interim on board and get the assessment started in order to have more information to tweak the job description for the permanent.
Otherwise we might not be hiring the person that we need.
Secondly when I had a problem with especially today's presentation is initial conversations were about -- not initial, ongoing conversations were about hiring a separate change manager.
And a separate entity to do the assessment.
So that you had some checks and balances in the process as it was going on.
And I remain there.
Because if you have the -- if you have the change manager doing the assessment themselves and there's no one kind of double checking from the outside perspective is this really on the right track.
But especially from the cio permanent hiring, I know it takes a long time.
I know we need to get one in here.
But, you know, outline organizations, not just the county, all organizations resist change, change is painful.
And -- the adding our it issues have been so long in the making, that we may have a lot of change we need to address.
And it's a lot easier for an interim manager to start helping make those changes and introduce perspective to the court, for example, on the costs and the need rather than a permanent person coming in and doing that, because then we may doubt our employees, say well, you know, he's trying to make us do too much, we won't do that.
If you have that bridge in there, you get I believe a more frank presentation and honest presentation from an analysis perspective.
Yes it takes a while, we've already been longer than we wanted to be.
I don't think we should rush into something just because it's already taken so long.
I feel pretty strongly about not hiring a cio until we have at least a little bit of the assessment going that we can tweak that job description to hire the person that we really need for the areas that we need them in.

>> Commissioner Eckhardt?
You through thinking?

>> Yeah.

>> [laughter]

>> At the risk of being duplicative of Commissioner Huber's position, I am going to bolster this some here.
There is a great degree of dissension, while we may at consensus on moving forward with an assessment prior to the hiring of a final, it's a delicate consensus.
I do wholeheartedly agree with what Karen has said, joe harlow made some very, very clear-headed and brave statements about a year and a half ago with regard to his concerns for his department.
And it was his suggestion, and I thought again that it was astute and brave, that we should have an assessment in slabs of hiring his replacement because he felt that bringing in his replacement without the assessment would put that new person in an untenable position and likely doom them to failure.
He -- I hate to put words in his mouth and joe, if you are listening, write me and tell me if I get this wrong, but he felt that it was important to have -- I'm going to use colorful terminology here, have a black hat come in, do the assessment, catch all of the fire so that we could then hire the permanent white hat after having had the -- the unfettered and unbiased view of the assessment.
Some of us will use those hats in just the opposite.
White hat come in doing the dirty work.
Black hat doing the cleanup.

>> Perhaps so.

>> [laughter]

>> But we are behind the eight ball in terms of our it infrastructure.
All we have to do is look at the budget presentation prior to this as far as the reserves that we have laid aside for -- for our court's technology, for our be fit, for -- for the tech share and -- and we've got some really big ticket items that are very expensive and we're -- were dissipated at this point because we're undergoing some growing pains and there's a lot of turf war frankly.
Going on within our organization with regard to who controls what.
So I do think it would be money well spent, I know that it's a chunk of change, but I think we will ultimately save money and having come in or an entity come in.
Doing the assessment so that we fully know what we're up against and so that the new permanent its director fully knows what he or she is up against.
It's a big challenge, but I think we need to have a -- I think we need to be on the same page about what we are asking this person to do.
Right now I don't think we can be on the same page without the assessment.
I think just the opposite.
I think that we get the most from our investment if we fill this job permanently and then if we need to hire a consultant for change, for assessment of whatever we want to hire the consultant for, we can do it.
That way the permanent director would be able to benefit from the consultant's work.
You bring in a hired gun for sings to nine months, that person can be as bold as anybody.
When that person leaves, though, he carried with them $400,000 and a clear conscience I guess, I don't know that we benefit that much.
I think we benefit more by hiring a permanent person in here doing the best we can, that's what we do with all of the managers.
There's nothing magical about this department but it's important.
But it's important also to have permanent leadership there.
There's a reason it's taken us a year and a half to two years to make a decision.
It's a tough decision.
I don't know that we are any better capable of making the right decision today than we were two years ago.
So I have kind of acquiesced and gone along with the process.
But at the same time it has been clear to me that we really differ on how to approach this.
And so -- so, you know, joe's departure goads us into acting.
It is time for us to act, I don't think anybody will say that we're acting quickly, you know -- time does not make these decisions better.
But I do think now is the time when we need permanency if we can get it.
At the same time, though, whatever the majority of this court decides to do, I'll help implement it.
But my vote will be against bringing a consultant in, paying that person this much and my preference would be to go ahead and hire this position permanently.
And you say you need at least two weeks.
But we can work on the job description during that time, right?

>> I would like to add, if I may, that just to draw the parallel between hr department and this one and that the court was reluctant to hire an interim hr director and the protracted effort to get a permit got so long that we ultimately did go in and hire an interim hr, it worked out quite well.
In fact it worked out I think better than beyond all of our best expectations.
I think we have a team of three that you all laudablely appointed to run this and can run it in the interim.
I think we need to be sure that we understand the job description.
I think if we perceive right now even trying to tweak the job description in the next two weeks that we don't know what we don't know because we haven't had the assessment that will highlight what the needs are.
That we need at least two weeks if we have it, see where we can get them.

>> The other thing is if we need a consultant, I don't know that we need for six to nine months.
If we need a consultant to do the assessment, I assume that if you spend a little time here you can do the assessment anywhere in the world.
With technology being what it is.
So -- so another strategy to hire a person in for a shorter period say 60 to 09 60 0 days.
Whether we like it or not, ultimately we have to decide in what direction this department goes, we have to do the best we can to make the right decisions.
I think that probably should rely on the three managers in the department a lot more than we have historically.
It may be that we need to check with the private sector and public sector here in Travis County or central Texas, get whatever free advice we can get from them no matter how we proceed with the consultant.
So we can do those things almost immediately and I -- I think that there are those out there in the private sector and public sector willing to give us a helping hand if we ask for assistance.
Some of those questions can be general.

>> We need some real specific assessments, which includes interviewing stakeholders who are particularly disenchanted with the idea of a centralized its.
I don't think it can be done remotely.
But going to your point, are you --

>> That's another thing I don't have any problem with it.
I agree with you on that.
Stakeholder involvement.

>> Are you -- I'm looking for middle ground here.
I hear what you are saying with regard to not having a consultant to do both the assessment and be the interim cio.
Would it meet with your -- would it allay your concerns if we just had the consultant do an assessment and continue forward with our -- with our triad interim management?
So that we could get the assessment done before hiring the permanent?

>> If we could it would alay my concerns if the consultant charged a whole lot less than 40,000 a month, yep.

>> The bulk this that we have today with the combined change assessment there, is there a separate breakout for like lucas to do the just the assessment or for the change manager?

>> No, no, no, no.
I went back and negotiated for him to do the interim and the assessment.

>> Who authorized that, the assessment to do that?

>> The group, our evaluation committee, that was the majority vote.

>> You know, when the subcommittee is working with you folks on that, it would really be nice to know about that before you bring it to court.

>> But in any case, we can go forward and see what the breakout could be.
So that we can get to -- because cyd I'm so sorry that you keep getting different assignments.
I know that -- I know how frustrating that is, that the assignment seems to keep changing, I know it's frustrating for its too as well, walter.
But we'll get there.
We'll get there.

>> Yeah.

>> Can you get some comparables of what from some other institutions or entities, other counties or whatever that have had any kind of assessment of what they might have paid for it so that will help us decide whether or not this is in the ballpark of what's reasonable?

>> Well, we looked at some of that.
Some of these assessments can cost upwards of a million dollars.
We got seven proposals, this proposal that we finally landed on just for the assessment was $211,000.
So there's 200,000.

>> That's half.

>> That's half.
So then you add the cio, there's the other half.
So it's really comparable.
We think or I do.
I -- I am speaking for myself.
I think that 375 is comparable to hiring a firm to do an assessment and a separate interim cio.
Now, I do need to let you know that there you that competitive process the top firm, pti, has pulled out because they had to move on to other jobs.
So right now if you tell me okay we want to just do an assessment, I can go back I guess to the second ranked firm and negotiate with them, but I believe their proposal is actually higher than pti.
So I think this price comparably and is reasonable for what we're asking them to do.
Yes, this person is the highest paid person that we selected but he was the best and this is what he's known for is to come in, do assessments, you know, bam, bam, bam, here's my recommendation and then he's gone.
He has some --

>> I think we ought to get the quote on just the assessment piece.
I had in mind a figure of $200,000.

>> It's 200 or up, judge.
We had several proposals --

>> I've had in mind $200,000 for the last 18 months.

>> We will spend two weeks working on it real hard.

>> Okay.

>> I do think we ought to make some phone calls and find out, how to get this assessment done, who can do it, what will it cost?

>> I don't know that cyd has to be the one to make these phone calls.

>> I had all of that data.
We had seven proposals that we competitively solicited from firms. Seven firms submitted them from 200,000 up.
So I can go back and get that data and give it back to you.

>> For what service.

>> Assessment, just the assessment.
Now one of those, tgi, included four months of an interim cio.
So we could have got the interim cio and the assessment for 210,000, but that opportunity has passed us by.

>> Well, or has it?

>> Yes, it has, pti --

>> They lost the person went to another job.

>> That's happened a couple of times.

>> It wasn't our delay.
It was their change in -- change in ownership.
I think that -- a lot of people -- I mean there's -- it's challenging out there to understand the cost of good it services and oversight and assessments and everything else.
I know that even I will have sticker shock.
That's why I think it's really important that we have some measures to push up against that have been expended elsewhere for similar type of assessments or whatever we're going to propose because if we don't have that, then the rest of the court doesn't have that frame of reference.
I mean, Commissioner Eckhardt and I have been sitting in on some of these meetings, we have seen over and over again and cumulatively what kind of costs we are pushing up against, but the rest of the court haven't had that.
We have got to be able to spell that out in realistic references.

>> Well, we have a huge amount of money in reserve.
Our challenge is to spend that wisely.
And my view, now is the time to focus on the assessment, trying to figure out what's a fair price to pay for the assessment that we need.
At some point, though, we've got to put together some document, sort of scope of work, right?

>> Which we have.
We have -- we actually have several versions of it.

>> When will the courtesy that?

>> See that should have been backup today with this item for you, judge.

>> You all saw that six months ago, I will bring it back.

>> Did I like it six months ago?

>> [laughter]

>> We had a document that was the rfs that scoped all of this out.
And it was a -- it was an assessment of its.
So we have that document.
We have a lot of background information and I fall on my sword that I could have done a better job of updating the court about what was going on.
We probably all could have because this has been a rollercoaster ride.
Because again --

>> A long one.

>> It's difficult to get consensus inside the operational planning team for a variety of reason that are understandable.

>> Did the court approve the document that you all are talking about?

>> Yes, sir.

>> Let me see that.

>> Let me see that again, I may have been smarter and more efficient than I realized.

>> [laughter] two weeks from now?
Job description next week or do you all want to wait two weeks on that, too?

>> We need to wait two weeks on that, too, I think.

>> Tell Commissioner Davis he can come on back.
Tell him we're not taking a vote.

>> [laughter] postponing action on this, two weeks.

>> I just want to say I'm taking my son to college that week, so I might not be here that week.
But somebody will be here in my place if I'm not here.

>> Cyd, knowing us we probably prefer to get you before you leave or when you get back.
We don't want you to miss this opportunity.

>> We want you after you've gotten back and I will pay for a spa visit for you when you take your son to college.

>> Pay for what?

>> A spa visit.

>> For me?
Okay, you all heard that.

>> [laughter]

>> All right.
Do we need that committee to meet again before the next court meeting.

>> We will regroup.

>> Two weeks.

>> Good backup and good executive summary on the backup.

>> Do we want to say three weeks?

>> Cyd, are you sure you want to be present.

>> We're going to give her a hug.

>> All right.
Let's do that.
Thank you very much.

>> Thank you.

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