Quote:Gov. Perry suspends Texas' technology contract with IBM 11:11 AM CT

11:28 AM CDT on Tuesday, October 28, 2008

By EMILY RAMSHAW / The Dallas Morning News
eramshaw@dallasnews.com

AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry will suspend the state’s information technology contract today until an assessment of the newly privatized computer system can be completed.

The decision follows a Dallas Morning News investigation into a record-destroying computer crash in the Texas attorney general’s office, and concerns that state vendor IBM isn’t backing up critical computer data in more than a dozen state agencies.

“We’re just putting it on hold so we can stop, look and listen,” said Jay Kimbrough, Mr. Perry’s chief of staff. “We need to see what happened, see who’s responsible. We want this data consolidation stopped until we get an assessment and an explanation.”

Mr. Perry is expected to notify the Department of Information Resources (DIR), which oversees the contract with IBM, later today. In a Monday letter, DIR chief Brian Rawson wrote that IBM is “not meeting expectations,” and has been fined $900,000 for a failure to complete timely backups, as required by its $863 million, seven-year contract.

An IBM spokesman told The News on Monday that the company is racing to correct the data backup problems.

Last week, The News reported that a server malfunction in July destroyed nearly half of eight months’ worth of documents belonging to Attorney General Greg Abbott’s Medicaid fraud investigators in Tyler. The loss compromised scores of prosecutions.

In the months before that crash, more than 10 agencies complained about network breakdowns and server backup problems with their new contractor, The News reported today – an indication that the attorney general’s documents weren’t the only ones at risk.