Bloomberg: “Massive Computer Projects . . . Very Seldom . . . Successful”

The CityTime system, an effort to install fancy doodads (read: high-tech punch clocks) in municipal offices that was to have cost $68 million but now is up to $722 million, has been called a “disaster” by the mayor:

“It’s been a disaster. It is one of these massive computer projects that very seldom ever is successful,” said Bloomberg, who made his fortune with financial data systems.

Now imagine that sentence applied to congestion pricing had that been implemented (kind of amazing, by the way, that Bloomberg has kept plugging congestion pricing now that the MTA is having money trouble).

Now there are two aspects to CityTime — one is a paperless timekeeping system and the other is the aforementioned punch clock doodad. It would be interesting to know where the problem is. A paperless timekeeping system theoretically has some positive benefits: it is “green” in the sense that there are no more paper timecards and automating the timekeeping system theoretically means the city needs fewer timekeepers. On the other hand, the biometric punch clocks that unnecessarily agitated desk workers always seemed like a huge waste of money. You only need punch clocks if you’re worried workers are leaving early — instead of babysitting them why not just make sure there is enough actual work to do?

Another awesome tidbit about the punch clocks is that instead of using the actual time an employee punches in and out, the machines instead round up and down to the nearest fifteen-minute increment. So that, say, an employee punches in at 9:07 and leaves at 4:53, that employee will have “worked” a full seven-hour day. Over the course of a work week, that’s 70 minutes free. Brilliant! (And if the employee punches in at 8:52 and punches out at 4:53 the machine will give him or her fifteen minutes of comp time — love it!) The other unintended consequence is that employees are less likely to hang out after five to work on projects. We’ve heard of both scenarios occurring.