Daryl Jones' Weblog

Chicago PD asks FCC for T-band giveback clarification

daryl — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 02:41:47 +0000

04/12/2012 – Captain Martin E. Ryczek of the Chicago Police Department filed a “Request for Advisory Opinion” with the FCC regarding the recently passed legislation under H.R. 3630 as it pertains to the mandated relocation of public safety licensees from the UHF T-band (470-512 MHz). Captain Ryczek asks some tough questions and points out several flaws in the legislation. Kudos to the Chicago Police Department and Captain Ryczek for publicly asking the questions that many T-band licensees need answers to.

Please read Captain Ryczek’s letter below.

NTIA cautions BayWEB to consider halting work

daryl — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 17:23:58 +0000

This post is based on information gleaned from Andrew Seybold’s Public Safety newsletter.

The NTIA on March 28, 2012 met with representatives of the National Governor’s Association and delivered a message cautioning the 21 waiver jurisdictions that have been granted authority by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to begin network construction to consider halting their work in order to ensure resources are not wasted when the nationwide network is deployed.

Will Bay Area governments continue pouring cash and other resources into BayWEB? This ethically questionable no-bid deal with Motorola will almost certainly not be compliant with technical and governance standards that will soon be cast for the nationwide public-safety D-Block broadband network.

In essence, NTIA told BayWEB to stand down. Will this force the BayWEB project to be scrapped before it is built, or will it be built and then scrapped? Allowing BayWEB to continue is not in the public interest. The troubled project should be shut down now.

I continue to believe that mission-critical voice and data communication for public safety will quickly become ubiquitous in major metropolitan areas. It will hasten the obsolescence of P25 trunked systems and it has the potential to become a truly interoperable radio system for first responders. Perhaps NTIA is on the right track this time.

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City to contractor: Pretty please, could you take back this great $549 million wireless network?

daryl — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 16:03:36 +0000

First published on 02/15/2012 by the New York Daily News. Click here to read the original article.

Northrop Grumman says, No, thanks, but we can make you a sweet $38 million-a-year maintenance deal on underused NYCWiN system

TWO YEARS after unveiling a $549 million public-safety wireless data network that the NYPD and FDNY have been slow to embrace, the Bloomberg administration tried and failed to sell it back to its builder.

Bloomberg aides approached the defense giant Northrop Grumman last year about purchasing the system, dubbed the New York City Wireless Network (NYCWiN), and then leasing it back to the city.

Since its launch in 2009, NYCWiN has attracted far fewer users than its capacity, and the system is costing more than $38 million annually to maintain, documents obtained by the Daily News show.

The city made the offer during negotiations on a new five-year contract for Northrop to service the system, a spokesman for the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications confirmed this week.

“It was certainly something we kicked around,” spokesman Nick Sbordone said, but it had “nothing to do with any problems” in the network.

The city was simply “facing a budget shortfall and looking for innovative ways to find a cash infusion,” Sbordone said. The sale could have saved the city maintenance costs and made it possible for Northrup to market the excess capacity.

But the company rejected the concept and opted instead for another $200 million contract just to maintain the system for the next five years.

So why would City Hall want to sell a network it has trumpeted as assuring vital public-safety data in case of another natural disaster or terrorist attack?

Well, officials are reluctant to admit it, but its public safety agencies aren’t exactly embracing NYCWiN. “This network works, and it came in on-time and on-budget,” Sbordone said, “but it’s up to each agency how they use it.”

Only 1,100 of a proposed 2,200 police vehicles, for example, have been equipped so far with modems that connect to the system.

Likewise, only about 300 of some 1,200 Fire Department vehicles have been equipped. Some 1,000 new solar-powered emergency call boxes were supposed to be installed to replace antiquated Fire Department street boxes.

So far, one wireless call box is in operation. The system does provide some critical features: radiation sensors around the city, and the ability for first responders to set up mobile command centers with live video streaming at major public events.

Still, less than 15% of its capacity was used on any given day throughout most of last year, records show. Even then, the biggest user of bandwidth were not NYPD and FDNY, but the Department of Transportation, which relies on the system to control 5,500 traffic lights daily and to transmit photos of license plates.

Another big user is the Department of Environmental Protection, which uses it for wireless monitoring of 785,000 water meters four times a day — though DEP first had to spend an additional $250 million to install new meters in the homes of every single customer.

City Councilwoman Gale Brewer, chairwoman of the Council’s technology committee, was shocked to learn of the city’s offer.

“This is one of those assets you don’t sell,” Brewer said. “We put so much money into it, we should find a way to make it costneutral.”

By: jgonzalez@nydailynews.com

Obama’s Next Solyndra-Style Scandal Is Called “LA-RICS”

daryl — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:29:43 +0000

This article first appeared in Forbes on 02/17/2012

Richard Miniter, Contributor to Forbes

Remember those “shovel ready” jobs that President Obama promised the $700 billion stimulus bill would create? Almost four years and more than $250 million in federal grants later, they still haven’t arrived in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, life-saving improvements to the police, fire and other local government communications systems have been delayed–putting the more than 9 million residents of Los Angeles County at risk.

Here is a story that the mainstream media has largely ignored; a tale of cronyism, special interests, law-breaking, bureaucratic delays, union complaints, last-minute changes in the law solely designed so that Los Angeles could keep federal grant money, panicked spending of federal money, and ultimately more than $800 million of your tax dollars.

Like all tragedies, it holds a powerful lesson: massive Keynesian spending programs often fail to create jobs or grow the economy, but insider “experts” rarely fail to get their piece of the action.

Our story begins with a lofty and laudable goal. In bureaucratic argot, it is known as “interoperability.”

That’s a fancy word for the ability of police, fire, first responders, ambulance drivers, hospitals and even public works department workers to talk to each over a shared network. In a horrific terrorist attack or ordinary mudslide, police might be needed to provide order, fire rescue teams to pull people from collapsed buildings, public-works bulldozers to clear the roads, ambulance teams to be efficiently dispatched and share medical records with hospitals and so on. Imagine if a hospital could review your records before you arrive or a police helicopter could tell an ambulance that the road ahead is blocked but a side road is open. Saving time amounts to saving lives.

To achieve true “interoperability” in Los Angeles County, you need to link together 88 independent cities and agencies (from Beverly Hills to Torrance), the city of Los Angeles, the county government and its sheriff, several port authorities, a national forest and so on. An undertaking that is described by an LA-RICS board member “as hard as going to the Moon.”

But we eventually got to the Moon. Los Angeles County has yet to put up a single tower.

To knit all of the agencies and governments together, Los Angeles County formed a “joint-powers authority” (binding together all of the cities and other agencies in America’s most populous county) to administer the new Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications System (known by the acronym LA-RICS), and applied for the largest federal grant ever given for that purpose. And the county got its wish. It received a more than 11 federal grants with a combined value of $250 million, including a $154 million Broadband Technology Opportunities Program grant, the largest of its kind in the nation. The balance, perhaps another $500 million, was to be borne by the taxpayers of Los Angeles.

The champagne was hardly uncorked, when the problems spilled over.

Since communications systems—both radio and microwave—require expertise to design and build, an obscure outfit known as DeltaWrx was hired. The joint-powers authority board didn’t want to pay for the consultants. So the chief executive officer of Los Angeles County, William T. Fujioka, decided to pay them with county money. The County CEO has a “delegated authority” to hire consultants, of course.

Usually, this involves paying a firm $150,000 to do an environmental study or legal research. Yet, in this case, Fujioka agreed to pay DeltaWrx more than $4 million—far more than any other consultant in that period.

I reviewed the consulting contracts listed under Fujioka’s delegated authority quarterly disclosure statement for July-September 2010; it shows only three of the 22 contracts listed were for more than $2 million over that period. DeltaWrx, at $4.075 million, was, by far, the largest. That fact has left some people wondering: What makes DeltaWrx so valuable?

Some of those wondering actually sit on the board of LA-RICS. One was LeRoy Jackson, the City Manager of Torrance. He repeatedly asked some hard questions about DeltaWrx: What is scope of services in their contract, whom do they report to, who is liable for decisions based on their advice? No copy of the outsized contract has ever been made public.

LA-RICS executive director, Pat Mallon, told me that he hasn’t seen the DeltaWrx contract and didn’t know its terms. County Chief Executive Fujioka admitted to me in a telephone interview that DeltaWrx’s “scope of work kept changing.”

One way to clarify DeltaWrx’s role is find out whom the firm reports to and ask that person — but that is not as simple as it sounds. When I asked the LA- RICS executive director: “Whom does DeltaWrx report to?” He laughed. He said it’s a “sort of a hybrid.” DeltaWrx’s president, Michael Thayer, has an office beside executive director Mallon’s and, Mallon explained, “he is supposed to support me” in a rapidly moving set of technical challenges. But Thayer’s boss is actually county chief executive, Fujioka. And DeltaWrx is supposed to be providing technical advice to the LA-RICS board, but the firm doesn’t answer to them.

LA-RICS board member LeRoy Jackson asked why the pricey consultants reported to the County CEO instead of the board? After all, if they work for the board, Jackson said, they should report to the Board. Fujioka, citing a responsibility to manage money the county pays out, told me the board doesn’t pay DeltaWrx’s bills, so it doesn’t have a say. Jackson’s objections were shouldered aside and the DeltaWrx contract continued. Confused yet?

Indeed, every one I talked to about DeltaWrx seemed kind of fuzzy about how the firm adds value.

But it soon became clear how DeltaWrx subtracts value.

The consulting firm, Mallon said, has played an integral role in the project since its start. DeltaWrx’s president helped design the giant “request for proposal” (known as an “RFP” in the lingo) that brought in bidders from around the country in April 2010. It was a three-year undertaking—but the Rube Goldberg contraption soon exploded.

Soon after the initial RFP was awarded to Raytheon and its partners in March 2011, the County Counsel’s office found that the RFP was illegally designed, violating a number of California laws, including the Brown Act. (Months later, Los Angeles County and City would be forced to approach Governor Brown in the hopes of getting what amounts to an exception to his father’s signature legislative act.)

A confidential legal analysis, conducted by the County Counsel’s office, was soon circulating among key decision makers. It concluded that the RFP was “flawed and cannot proceed,” adding that there were so many legal defects that “it would result in a court voiding any contract” awarded under it. Among the numerous legal defects, it ignored the state’s strict contracting laws on new construction. The RFP included constructing some 255 towers and digging up sidewalks to string fiber-optic cable. How could the costly consultants not realize that California’s construction contracting laws would come into play?

So three years of effort and tens of millions of taxpayer dollars were thrown away and Los Angeles had to start over, in July 2011.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors was not amused. The board’s chairman, Zev Yaroslavsky, thundered: “This is one of the worst and potentially most costly mistakes I have ever witnessed in all my years in government.” Yaroslavsky has been observing the microscopic hijinks of Los Angeles politics for decades.

Bureaucratic blundering also frustrated another Supervisor, Mike Antonovich. His staffer, Anna Pembedjian, said he was “very unhappy about the way the first RFP was handled.”

Yet no one was fired. The County Counsel, Andrea Ordin, retired, but that may have been unrelated to the legal contracting mess that was described by nearly every participant as a “fiasco.”

Thayer — the $4 million man — had his fingerprints all over the illegal RFP. He remains at his post. As for DeltaWrx (once known as Thayer Consulting)? It secured a $1.69 million contract renewal to continue its work on L.A.-RICS in May 2011. Despite repeated calls to his Woodland Hills corporate offices and emails to his L.A.-RICS email address, Thayer refused all requests for an interview.

Instead, Pat Mallon—who had wowed county officials by successfully forming a joint-crime lab to be shared by Los Angeles County and city investigators—was brought in to fix the mess as executive director in May 2011.

Meanwhile, the only hope Los Angeles had of meeting federal deadlines for spending tens of millions of dollars meant that it had to get a mulligan so it could play past California law. That proved relatively easy to do thanks to a flexible minded committee chairwoman in the state legislature. “There was no way that we were giving up a great public safety tool just because someone forgot to dot the I’s and cross the T’s,” Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) told the Los Angeles Times. “Federal money isn’t so easy to come by these days and we can’t afford to let this get away.”

With Lowenthal leading the charge, the California legislature passed a law creating a unique loophole in state contracting law… so that L.A. could keep its federal grants. They couldn’t afford to let the money get away.

After the missed deadlines, technically illegal procurement plans, the shouting behind closed doors and the last-minute changes in state law, a new danger loomed. Again, it found that L.A. could not spend money in accord with the federal deadlines. This time, the enemy was time. Time itself.

If Los Angeles County and City didn’t spend $58 million by the federal deadline of May 2012, it would have to return that grant money. And they couldn’t possibly do it. Working at breakneck speed, the L.A.-RICS staff and board had presented a new RFP in November 2011. Bids came in from all over the country. There was simply no way the staff could get through the statutory contract evaluation process in time.

Even if the new contract was awarded in the coming weeks (as expected), there was simply no practical way for the contractor and its sub-contractor firms to spend that much money in that little time on approved uses. Despite their best efforts, it looked like L.A. was going to have to return some of its federal grant money…

That is, unless Fujioka became creative. And he did. He identified millions of dollars in existing city and county contracts where he could legitimately spend federal grant money in some way or another, to further the LA-RICS plan. All perfectly legal and perhaps bureaucratically brilliant—but driven by the fear of losing federal money and the impending wallop of missed federal deadlines. The County chief executive demanded that LA-RICS board members and county officials get their proposals in immediately. Panic was setting in. The money was about to go back to Washington.

One clever solution was dispatcher’s consoles. Police, fire and other dispatchers sit at a console loaded with equipment, sort of mini-Mission Control. But Houston, we have a problem. Those consoles were due to be replaced and new ones would not be compatible with the system LA-RICS was designing. Why not use the federal grant money to upgrade to new, compatible consoles? Anything to soak up federal grants before they left L.A. County unspent.

Meanwhile, the police and fire fighters’ unions began to have objections of their own. The LA-RICS system would literally be a matter of life and death for those unionized public-safety officers. “We understand that there are tight timelines the JPA [LA-RICS] is trying to meet, but we ask , what is the rush?” wrote Dave Gillotte, the president of Los Angeles County Fire Fighters Local 1014, in a letter to L.A. County chief executive Fujioka. “Why not make sure that we do it right? We don’t want to repeat the same mistakes of New York, Pennsylvania, and other failed systems across the country in our efforts to get it done quickly. It is heartbreaking for us to see that ten years after 9/11 that New York still does not have an operating system due to vendor failures. We strongly believe that we have one shot to get this right. We believe that with our collective lobbying efforts they [the Obama Administration] will be patient with us in order to ensure we have the best operating system possible for our men and women of public safety.””

It is a good question, perhaps the fundamental question of LA-RICS. Why rush? Why can’t the deadlines be relaxed, as the union leaders thoughtfully suggested? And the unions even offered to lobby the Obama Administration for a deadline extension. So why rush?

Mallon knows the answer. “The federal government wanted those jobs in 2011. They will take them in 2012,” he said. “But not 2013.”

He’s right. The federal deadlines are very unlikely to be eased. The soft-spoken former Sheriff’s Department commander is too polite to say the obvious: it is presidential politics.

Why spend federal money today to create jobs in a future year when President Obama may not be in the White House to enjoy the credit? 2012 is an election year, after all. Meanwhile, the people of Los Angeles County wait for a radio system that will actually allow their more than 50 police and 31 fire departments to talk to each other.

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Santa Clara County opts out of the BayWEB BOOM agreement

daryl — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:09:39 +0000

In a memorandum dated 01/12/2012, the Santa Clara County Executive continues to act in a fiscally responsible and ethical manner by recommending to the Board of Supervisors against signing the BayWEB “Build, Own, Operate and Maintain” (BOOM) agreement. The Board’s Finance and Government Operations Committee concurred with the recommendation and it is expected to be ratified by the full Board of Supervisors.

Numerous improprieties related to the controverisal BayWEB project have been exposed and investigations are continuing. How could other counties in the Bay Area possibly support the BOOM agreement in view of the substantiated information that is publicly available?

Even though Santa Clara almost certainly will not be signing the BOOM agreement, it will consider making its radio sites available for BayWEB equipment, should the project proceed.

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US Inspector General validates concerns about BayWEB

daryl — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 06:10:55 +0000

It sure does feel good when the U.S. Inspector General finally validates the concerns that so many public officials and citizens have expressed regarding the BayWEB project. In a memorandum dated January 10, 2012, Inspector General Todd Zinser advises NTIA’s Lawrence Strickling of the (obvious) improprieties related to the $50.6M BTOP grant intended to fund the Bay Area’s broadband LTE project for public safety agencies.

Links to my previous articles related to the improprieties at Bay Area UASI.

Click here for a list of many documents related to BayWEB.

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San Jose should be congratulated. Bravo!

daryl — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:00:12 +0000

Guest commentary regarding BayWEB

While BayWEB was a dismal, convoluted, and quite smelly failure, I think it can be viewed as a success in certain aspects of how public safety should NOT purchase high-tech systems.

As the old saying goes:
“Everyone has a purpose in life – even if to be used as a bad example.” In this case, it is the BTOP grant process, not San Jose, to be held up as a bad example.

Two recent industry articles describe how silly the BTOP grant process can become.

http://www.rrmediagroup.com/newsArticle.cfm?news_id=7763

“Such a vote puts the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 funds at risk, but we can all cite projects where free money from federal or state sources have led to exponentially higher downstream costs (emphasis added),” the report said. “San Jose staff does not come to this recommendation lightly. Staff has invested thousands of hours in the negotiations and related work to create the BayRICS Authority. This time has been well spent in ensuring that if the project goes forward, it will be governed by an organization created to operate transparently.”

San Jose should be congratulated in doing its homework and looking at other bad examples of good intentions run amok. BOOM-formats tend to allow for secrecy where the vendor can ‘hide the ball’ on system information or true costs, the vendor is not subject to FOIA, and the vendor has little transparency and scant public accountability.

In other coverage of this story, we see:

http://tinyurl.com/d7bmup4

Quotes and comments below:

“One of the key funding uncertainties for San Jose was associated with the cost to supply adequate backhaul for the proposed LTE network. Under the proposed deal, the JPA would have to supply backhaul from the LTE sites, and many jurisdictions are counting on a negotiated deal with the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Authority to use the transit organization’s fiber network to address the backhaul issue for little or no cost.”

“However, the BART fiber network does not extend to San Jose, so the city would have to find another backhaul alternative to support the proposed network, according to Michelle McGurk, San Jose’s JPA representative.”

Comment: This is a GREAT take-away. In many cases, the backhaul is an after-thought. In Will County, we are trying to implement ubiquitous fiber FIRST – for all sorts of public-safety applications – including future wireless projects, NG911, and data. But, BTOP apparently wanted to support LTE/wireless/700MHz D-Block applicants, and although Will County passed several gates on the BTOP application process (with transparency, competition, and accountability for ongoing system support), our fiber-oriented application fell by the wayside. Some may view this as a ‘sour grapes’ comment, but I wanted to use our example of another, possibly better, use of a BTOP grant.

“Such fiscal uncertainty is particularly difficult during the current climate of tight budgets for a city like San Jose, which has made significant public-safety layoffs and salary cuts during the past year.”

“This is not a time to sign on to the possibility of significant costs that we might not be able to bear,” Reed said.

Comment: This is another GREAT take-away. How many contracts have we seen where a vendor comes in low to get the job, then floats the price up over time just to obtain basic services? In a nearby county, there is a case-in-point with a $7.055M P25 project that is now screaming skyward in excess of $30M with multiple scope-changing ‘change orders’. The project started in 2006 and is still not on the air. The BayRICS project appeared to be doomed as another example of just this….come in low and jack up costs over time. San Jose policy-makers should be congratulated on aborting a money-pit project sooner than later.

Comment: Lastly, this should be a cautionary tale for the NTIA to refuse to have a vendor be the BTOP grant applicant, the vendor listing its subcontractors as “participants” in a BTOP grant, and the NTIA/BTOP facilitating a sole-source-no-bid scheme which side-steps all competitive bidding in a market where competition is SUPPOSED to hold down costs.

Hello? FCC Chairman? NTIA administrators and BTOP grant issuers? House Committee on Science and Technology?

CAN YOU HEAR US NOW on the issue of competition versus endorsement and support of sole-source-no-bid awards in a Federal grant environment?

Comments made are my own and may not be the opinion of my employer, or any organization for which I am an officer, member, or representative.

Executive Director Steve Rauter,
Western Will County Communications Center

(WESCOM)

14300 S. Coil Plus Drive
Plainfield, IL 60544
Email: SRauter@WESCOM-9-1-1.org
General: 815-267-8300

BayWEB 700 MHz LTE project now expected to fail

daryl — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 16:01:52 +0000

The troubled BayWEB project is based on an ethically questionable business model that is fiscally unsustainable. Engineering and funding uncertainties far outweigh all possible benefit to the public safety community. It appears that the San Jose City Council shares my opinion.

The San Jose City Council unanimously approved a staff recommendation to:

1) Approve a report on the status of site access and use agreement negotiations with Motorola to use four San Jose radio sites for the public safety component of the regional broadband system called BayWEB.

2) Authorize the Mayor to sign and file, together with Oakland and San Francisco, an amended petition with the FCC for a waiver to use the 700 MHz public safety spectrum.

3) Approve San Jose’s Comments on the San Francisco Bay Area Regional Interoperable Communications System (BayRICS) Joint Powers Authority System Funding Plan for filing with the BayRICS JPA. (Note: these comments are Attachment D of the staff report.)

4) Policy direction to San Jose’s BayRICS representative to vote no on the Build-Own-Operate-Maintain Agreement (BOOM) between the BayRICS JPA and Motorola.

The recommendation to Council comes after San Jose has invested thousands of hours of staff time in working to ensure that the BayWEB project meets the needs of our public safety first responders now and in the future. San Jose’s legal and management staff helped create the BayRICS Joint Powers Authority, and participated on the negotiations team for the final BOOM Agreement with Motorola since the Spring.

San Jose Exits Controversial BayWEB 700 MHz Stimulus Project // StimulatingBroadband.com – Tuesday, December 13, 2011

San Jose Votes No on BayWEB Funding // RadioResource Media Group — Wednesday, December 14, 2011

San Jose Declines LTE Deal with Motorola // Urgent Communications – Wednesday, December 14, 2011

City of San Jose staff report related to the City Council’s decision.

Links to my previous articles related to the improprieties at Bay Area UASI.

Click here for a list of many documents related to BayWEB.

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Once upon a time in a land far, far away…

daryl — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 22:51:10 +0000

Received from an anonymous contributor, possibly located in Illinois.

Once upon a time in the land of Far-Far-Away in the State of Insolvent there were some chiefs from Bewildered County. They had an old-fashioned stupid plain vanilla analog radio system that worked perfectly two thirds of the time, but the other third of the time their radios had a little static. Even though it almost never-ever failed completely it just wasn’t rosy and perfect. They could still talk to all their neighbors (who had old-fashioned stupid plain vanilla analog radio systems too), but not directly to the Big Department in Crooked County hundreds of miles away, or to the Inspectors from the State of Insolvent or the Men from Far-Far-Away. And most importantly, it just wasn’t shiny and NEW.

The Big Chief in Bewildered County had been envious of the shiny new super-duper radio system Crooked County was using. Those NEW magical radios just had to be BETTER and work super-duper everywhere. He wanted ALL of his Indians to be able to talk to ALL of the Big Department Indians or to ALL of the Inspectors from the State of Insolvent or to ALL of the Men from Far-Far-Away anytime they wanted, even though they probably wouldn’t ever need to. So he got a bid from the same vendor that Crooked County and the State of Insolvent used.

“Crooked County and the State of Insolvent buy from them,” he told the other Chiefs. ‘the Super-Salesman even showed me a fancy parchment from his vendor that says they exceed the Far-Far-Away Department of Kingdom Security Everything Must Work Together Standards. Their price was only two million walnuts and the Super-Salesman promised it was a bargain for the newest bestest thing. I don’t even need to get another bid because everything is on the Insolvent State Contract. Besides, Super-Salesmen are never wrong and he confirmed that New is Always Better.”

Old Chief Fuddyduddy said, “Wait just a minute. The Big Department’s system is designed for high-rise castles or flat wide open fields. It won’t work well here in Bewildered County because all we have is scenic forested hills and charming little cabins nestled down in deep valleys. We already use all the stupid plain vanilla analog interoperability channels at big parties. If we changed we couldn’t talk to the neighbors over in Big Mountain County or to all our other neighbors like we can now. If we pick one hundred thousand walnuts and fix up our old-fashioned stupid plain vanilla analog radio system it will work just fine. Why should we pick a whole two million walnuts to get a shiny new system?”

“Because our radios are scratched up and all dusty. Their shiny new super-duper radios are better because they are super-duper and shiny and new. Crooked County and State of Insolvent use them and we can be just like them. New is Always Better,” the Big Chief cheered.

The Chiefs invited the Super-Salesman to a party where the Super-Salesman led some of the Bewildered Chiefs singing “New is Always Better” songs. But old Chief Fuddyduddy didn’t sing along. He asked the Super-Salesman “Everyone thinks your radios are Far-Far-Awayian-made, so just where do you make these shiny new radios?” The Super-Salesman told the Chiefs that there were lots and lots of tiny little extra parts inside the shiny new radios, and that they were made in a distant kingdom in the East where there were lots and lots of elves with tiny little fingers. That way they could afford to put in all those tiny little extra parts.

The silly old Chief frowned and his crew-cut bristled. “He must not like elves with tiny fingers,” one of the other Chiefs whispered.

“So,” Chief Fuddyduddy asked, “when one of those tiny little extra parts break, can we send them to your castle here in Far-Far-Away to get them all fixed up?”

“Our radios never break because they’re shiny and new and perfect and special. But just in case a troll chews on one or a dragon breathes fire on it, we have fixer-upper elves standing by.” The Super-Salesman suddenly had a sneezing fit, but Chief Fuddyduddy was sure he heard something about all the fixer-upper elves working in a distant southern kingdom.

That Arbor Day many of the Chiefs, the Bewildered Council Members, and Hizzonner the Mayor’s PAC all got wonderful walnut gifts from the Super-Salesman’s cousin. Accepting baskets of plain old walnuts wouldn’t be nice, but they all agreed that accepting other walnut products was okey-dokey, so it was.

During the sales demo, all the Chiefs had to agree that the shiny new system didn’t have even an itsy-bitsy hint of static, although the voices sounded … funny. Almost everyone started singing “New is Always Better songs”. Old Chief Fuddyduddy didn’t laugh at the funny voices and argued about the change, but the Bewildered Big Chief held his breath and stomped his feet and pouted until got his way.

Halfway through the project, the Super-Salesman came to the Bewildered Chiefs and told them that there were itsy-bitsy problems with their initial design. If they gave him another million walnuts they could make it even more-better and only delay the project a little, just a year or two. They had already spent two million walnuts and the Super-Salesman said it could be called an addition to an existing contract. So remembering their wonderful walnut gifts they agreed to the additions to make the shiny new system even more-better.

Just before the shiny new system was finished, the Super-Salesman came to the Chiefs and told them about a super-shiny new-new radio that had just been introduced. It was even more-newer and more-shinier and more-better than the radio already on the contract and it let the Bewildered Dispatchers know how much battery life the new-new radios had remaining. The new-new radios weren’t exactly on the Insolvent State Contract, but the Super-Salesman crossed his heart and hoped to die and promised that the price was right because they were the vendor Crooked County and the State of Insolvent always used.

Old Chief Fuddyduddy asked the Super-Salesman who else was using the new-new radios. The Super-Salesman mumbled something about the elves not building the new-new super-shiny radios quite yet. But them his face brightened and he told the Chiefs that everyone was getting them and the super-smart engineers had all the bugs worked out and they were new-new and more-better. Since the radios were new-new and more-better and everyone was buying them and super-smart engineers are never wrong, the Chiefs agreed. Besides, it was really only a million walnut addition to the existing contract and More-New is Always More-Better.

Only thirteen moons later the new-new radios arrived. During testing, they found that the extra data (knowing about battery life was new and therefore must be important) overloaded the channels and made the batteries run down quicker. The Super-Salesman said that they needed new channels and bigger batteries to support the new, very important battery life data. New channels and bigger toys are always better and besides, it was really only a million walnut addition to the existing contract and New is Always Better.

Many, many, many moons later, the big day arrived and the shiny new-new radios were given to the Indians for the first time, and they marched out into the forest to arrest trolls and squirt water on dragons. Their shiny radios were brand new and simply had to be better. But there were some itsy-bitsy problems and the central magical thingamabob crashed so often nobody could talk. So, until the super-smart engineers could fix the itsy-bitsy problem the Chiefs and Indians went back to their stupid plain vanilla analog radio system that worked perfectly two thirds of the time but had a little static the other third.

Just to get by, the Chiefs picked three hundred thousand walnuts from their emergency tree to fix up their old-fashioned stupid plain vanilla analog radio system to make the nasty static go away and sound just like the shiny new radios would. Old Chief Fuddyduddy just shook his head, took early retirement, and moved to a state with low taxes and a balanced budget.

Six moons later the Super-Salesman said that new super-duper firmware was ready and would only cost a few hundred thousand extra walnuts to install. The Super-Salesman told the Chiefs that the vendor had super-smart engineers and that new firmware was always better and always fixed everything. When the radios were updated the Indians could talk to each other with no static. But sometimes their radios only played a beautiful bonking song or stayed blissfully quiet, and they had trouble recognizing the other Indian’s voices. The Dispatchers had more trouble understanding Mumbles the Brave, especially when his faithful K-9 companion was barking.

The Super-Salesman said that the super-smart engineers were almost done re-re-re-revising the perfect AN-TEEK codec. The new re-re-re-revision would magically make Mumbles the Brave sound like a rock star (as long as he always remembered to turn away so his radio didn’t pick up his dog singing chorus, or other places, situations or conditions as determined by the vendor at any later date as allowed in the itsy-bitsy print incorporated by reference into Appendix Q-7013 of the initial contract).

The Indians still insisted on finding places where the shiny new radios only worked when they stood on their left foot during rush hour or on their right foot between midnight and 3AM, and to other places where they only played the pretty bonking song or stayed blissfully quiet. The Super-Salesman said that the Indians were just being silly and they should stop finding those nasty places, but maybe if the Chiefs put up one or two shiny new towers the Indians wouldn’t need to stand on one foot to talk. Each new tower would only be a quarter million walnut addition to the original contract. “But,” the Super-Salesman added, “New is Always Better.”

Many, many moons later, six shiny new towers were built (more new is always more better that fewer new) and when it worked the new system was almost as good as their stupid plain vanilla analog radio system and didn’t have any static, ever.

But the silly Indians kept going to the places where the shiny new radios only played the pretty bonking song or stayed blissfully quiet. Lots of the Indians wanted to keep their stupid plain vanilla analog radios handy too just in case, because they all new how to make sense of static-y voices. The Chiefs said that were just being silly, because New is Always Better and the shiny super-duper re-re-re-revised AN-TEEK codec would do that for them.

One day Bewildered County had a big y’all come party. They didn’t even plan it, it just happened and got super-big super-fast. Their silly neighbors didn’t have shiny new radios but came over to party and dance anyway. Since Bewildered County didn’t have enough walnuts left to buy extra shiny new radios, the neighbors and Bewildered Chiefs couldn’t talk to each other across the crowded dance floor. The Insolvent Ministry of Magical Communications had plenty of extra shiny new radios, and said they would be happy to bring them to the party. Their Magicians would work at government-break-neck-speed and be there sometime the next day. So in the mean time, the Chiefs had to run home and find their old stupid plain vanilla analog radios so they could talk to all the silly neighbors who came to the party from miles around.

It was so sad. One of the Insolvent Inspectors was driving through Bewildered County while the Big Party was going on, but he couldn’t hear about it. He even had a wagon full of Party Inspectors and extra instruments. But since the Insolvent Ministry of Magical Communications didn’t let his shiny new radio hear the wonderful new Bewildered channel (listening to too many channels might damage their ears), and had thoughtfully taken out his old-fashioned stupid plain vanilla analog radio to make room in his horse-drawn wagon for a spare parachute (you can’t be too safe!), the Insolvent Inspectors didn’t learn about the big Bewildered dance until they were at a far away Inn watching the 11:00 Town Crier.

The next day, the Super-Salesman told the Bewildered Chiefs that if their silly neighbors got shiny new radios too, they could invite them over and talk to them at big parties. The Big Chief and the Super-Salesman jumped in their carriage and drove over the river and through the woods to see the old-fashioned Chief of Prudent County. They told the old-fashioned Prudent Chief that their shiny new radios were the latest thing, and that he needed shiny new radios too so they could all party and dance together. “New is Always Better” they chanted in chorus, as the Super-Salesman slid his proposal across the old-fashioned Chief’s desk with a grin, dreams of sugar-plumbs dancing in his head.

The Super-Salesman told the Prudent Chief the shiny new radios only cost 5,000 walnuts apiece. “New is Always Better and everyone is doing it,” repeated the Super-Salesman, ‘so it has to be right! We’ll write a grant for everyone in Prudent County so you can give us someone else’s walnuts. They grow on trees, you know.”

The Prudent Chief exclaimed, ‘that’s a lot of walnuts! But since most vendors can do the Far-Far-Away Department of Kingdom Security Everything Must Work Together Standard I think I’ll ask a second vendor to bid on shiny new radios also.”

“Oh, No!” exclaimed the Super-Salesman. “You can’t do that because our shiny new super-duper system handles super important battery life data in a special way that is so special we don’t let anyone else’s radios do it. We have more super-smart lawyers and squinty-eyed accountants than we have super-smart engineers and they all say the same thing. Besides, everyone knows that the other vendor’s elves all have big fingers and can’t build radios properly!”

When the Prudent Chief found out that the new super-duper system was so “special”, he offered to spend 10,000 walnuts to put a dim-witted gizmo in his old-fashioned system so he could bridge his stupid plain vanilla analog radios to the shiny new system in Bewildered County. The Super-Salesman said that wouldn’t work either because the squinty-eyed accounts feared his stupid plain vanilla analog radio traffic might hurt the ears of the Indians using the super-duper shiny new system. “Besides,” the Big Chief added, “our Bewildered Dispatchers wouldn’t be able to see how much battery life your stupid plain vanilla analog radios have left.”

The old-fashioned Prudent Chief politely showed the Super-Salesman and Bewildered Big Chief to the door and kept on using his stupid plain vanilla analog radio system that worked perfectly two thirds of the time but had a little static the other third. The old-fashioned Prudent Chief decided to have his Medicine Man re-program his stupid old radios with all of the stupid plain vanilla analog interoperable channels, got his Indians new antennas to reduce the static, and spent the 10,000 walnuts on twenty shiny-new stupid plain vanilla analog radios with extra batteries that he could loan to the Bewildered Chiefs and Indians when they came over to party in Prudent County.

The Prudent Chief did accept an offer from the Insolvent Ministry of Magical Communications for one shiny new super-duper radio so his Dispatchers could talk to Bewildered County, the Big Department in Crooked County, the State of Insolvent, and the Men from Far-Far-Away, just in case his Prudent County fan ever started to turn brown.

After six moons of itsy-bitsy adjustments the shiny new system in Bewildered County worked perfectly 80% of the time, played that pretty bonking song 10% of the time and stayed blissfully quiet the last 10% of the time. The bonks and silence always happened in the silliest of places like down in a dungeon fighting dragons or when chasing trolls through the forest or when everyone got all bothered and excited. The Super-Salesman said that 80% perfect was better that 66% perfect. They would learn to like the beautiful bonking music or perfect silence instead of having to listen to imperfect voices with that nasty static. Everything was all perfectly fine and normal with the Bewildered System because New is Always Better and all the other shiny super-duper systems did the same thing. The Super-Salesman crossed his heart and promised that the vendor’s super-smart engineers were working on it.

A few weeks later, one of the Bewildered Indians got a bad boo-boo because too many of the itsy-bitsy magical pieces got all jumbled up bouncing through the trees and over the hills on the way to his shiny new radio and it stayed blissfully quiet. The silly union sued the Chiefs because they thought the shiny new system was hazardous to the Indian’s health. The Chiefs counter-sued because New is Always Better and the perfect re-re-re-revised AN-TEEK codec used the latest magical frog DNA to fill in any missing pieces. The ridiculous old judge made the Chiefs switch back to the stupid plain vanilla analog radio system that worked perfectly two thirds of the time but had a little static the other third until the case was settled.

The Super-Salesman told the Chiefs not to worry “cause his super-super-smart engineers were working on a super-new-new system that let two sets of Indians talk on the same channel at the same time, and because it was so super-new-new it would be even more-more-better because everything in their rosy perfect world always worked perfectly. The shiny super-new-new radios would also talk to the stupid plain vanilla analog radios that the silly old-fashioned Chiefs over in Prudent and Big Mountain Counties insisted on keeping. Each super-new-new radio only cost 7,500 walnuts, but the Super-Salesman promised to give them a deal from the Insolvent State Contract.

Four years and seven million walnuts poorer, some of the Bewildered Chiefs looked at their bare walnut trees and the boxes of shiny new radios getting all dusty in the warehouse. They began to wonder if that stupid plain vanilla analog radio system that worked perfectly two thirds of the time but had a little static the other third, and let them talk to all their silly neighbors wasn’t so bad after all.

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Disclaimer

This is a work of fiction and any references, direct, inferred or assumed, to your favorite vendor and/or equipment, real person, Super-Salesman, troll, elf, and/or other imaginary creature, living or dead, is not intended to be specific however intentional it may appear. If you wish to complain that I am singling out vendor “X”, county “Y” and state “Z”, I will cite the same situation with vendors “A” & “O” in counties “Q” & “R” in states “E” and “F”. That being said, if you believe that there are not multiple instances that could be construed to be the subject of this work, you had better keep your rosy-colored glasses handy and watch out for marauding trolls and fire-breathing dragons as you march blissfully through your local forest.

/* end of contributed material */

Procurement failure in Rockdale County, Georgia

daryl — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 19:37:55 +0000

Rockdale County, Georgia desires to update its public-safety radio system and is about to become yet another poster child for a project that will under-perform and cost much more than budgeted. Basic rules for successful procurement and project implementation are being skirted, starting with a RFP that calls for an “upgrade” of an old analog radio system. This effectively precludes competition from other qualified bidders. It’s like buying a new telephone system and requiring that it be capable of working with proprietary, antiquated rotary-dial telephone instruments.

The RFP clearly states that the proposed system price must not exceed the designated budget of $4,500,00. This will limit any vendor from proposing a solution that could honestly meet the County’s requirement, resulting in a situation where very expensive additional infrastructure equipment will be essential. Once the initial contract is awarded, the County will have no choice but to sole-source millions of dollars in additional equipment and services. This allows the preferred vendor to have total control over predatory pricing for the life of the radio new system.

Is Rockdale County another example of a government entity succumbing to Motorola marketing its products through political influence, or is the Rockdale County staff assigned to this project merely inept?

One example of a deficiency in the RFP is an ambiguous reference to 95% coverage on portable radios inside vehicles, but omits any requirement for in-building coverage. Bizarre. Is it the County’s intention to not use permanently installed mobile radios? One of the most critical coverage requirements for a public safety radio system is reliable two-way communication with dispatchers and other field units from within buildings. Without this specification, the County has no assurance that police officers and firefighters will be able to reliably coordinate activities and summon potentially life-saving assistance.

The Rockdale County RFP is presented below. Let’s follow this project over the next few years and see how much it actually costs, and if performance problems are reported.

Chicagoland – Timeline of a stalled contract

daryl — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 15:56:58 +0000

Reprinted from the Chicago Tribune – 11/29/2011

Aug. 15, 2006: The DuPage County Emergency Telephone System Board announces its intent to “purchase a county-wide radio system.”

Aug. 20, 2006: On behalf of the 32 mayors and city managers in the DuPage Mayors and Managers Conference, Naperville Mayor George Pradel writes a letter opposing approval of the no-bid contract with Motorola, saying the project lacks a clear plan.

Sept. 14, 2006: The emergency telephone board votes 6-1 to approve its $7 million contract to build a nine-tower, five-channel radio system to be completed in 10 months.

Oct. 4, 2006: The DuPage Mayors and Managers Conference criticizes the board for approving such a complicated contract too quickly.

June 28, 2008: After Motorola said it needs more time, the emergency telephone board increases the contract total amount to $13.6 million from $7 million – to add more station sites and frequencies to the system.

Dec. 13, 2010: The board again increases the total to $28.6 million. Saying it is no longer affordable to build a new countywide system, DuPage agrees to rent air time on STARCOM, a statewide network Motorola already has built for the Illinois State Police.

Jan. 1, 2011: Motorola misses its first deadline in the new agreement: delivering 1,800 new radios to the county by the beginning of the new year.

Nov. 21, 2011: Emergency telephone board chairman Pat O’Shea reports that the system will not be up and running by its current target date of Dec. 1, 2011. Motorola declines to comment. O’Shea says he hopes the project will be completed by the end of 2012.

Debut of new DuPage emergency radio network is delayed – again

An open letter to the State of Illinois Budget Director

Illinois builds open a foundation of denial and greed

Harris Corp protests sole-source $207M contract to Motorola

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BayWEB Contract Documents Show $50 Million Stimulus Project at Risk of Cancellation

daryl — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 18:38:08 +0000

StimulatingBroadband.com 11/25/2011 San Francisco – Key documents relating to the controversial $50 million stimulus-funded public safety wireless project called BayWEB demonstrate that the project is at high risk of funding cancellation by the U.S. Department of Commerce.

BayWEB is one of only a handful of 700 MHz LTE public safety regional interoperable wireless systems to be funded to date by the federal government. It is the only such network funded by a federal agency — the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) of the Department of Commerce — under which the grantee is a private sector company rather than a governmental body.

Since the fourth quarter of 2010, the project’s grantee, Motorola Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: MSI), and the ever-changing array of public entities slated to benefit from the project have been negotiating to set the equipment pricing, build out scheduling, eventual ownership conditions, operating subscriber costs, and network design topology itself in non-public bilateral negotiations.

In simple terms, the key no-bid procurement contract for a $50 million federal grant-funded model wireless system has been negotiated in secret for a year. StimulatingBroadband.com earlier this week launched its third round of requests, both informal and under provisions of the California Public Records Act (CPRA) to secure the negotiating instruments called the Build, Operate, Own and Maintain Agreement (The BOOM Agreement).

This morning the draft BOOM Agreement dated November 21, and its existing Exhibits were released to this publication pursuant to our CPRA by a county agency which is a public member of the new entity, called BayRICS, which now manages the project along with MSI. The first draft of the BOOM Agreement, dated September 24, 2010 had been previously released by the previously managing public agency, Bay Area UASI, under a CPRA request made by the Office of Mayor Chuck Reed, of the City of San Jose.

The three documents are attached below.

The most recent BOOM Agreement draft demonstrates that the BayWEB project remains at high risk of project cancellation by NTIA, given the scope of critical portions of the contract still under negotiations, and the tight project deadlines required by federal stimulus timelines.

We publish the documents here now, to be followed by our analysis and commentary from public and industry parties to the negotiations. We publish now, given the significant industry concern expressed about the secret negotiations, lack of transparency around the process, and confidential criticism of the negotiations that have reached us from communications agency professionals here in the Bay Area.

BayWEB Draft BOOM Agreement – 11-22-2011

BayWEB Draft BOOM Agreement Exhibits – 11-22-2011

BayWEB Draft BOOM Agreement – 09-24-2010