Report: Atlantic City government IT outsourcing “inefficient, ineffective”

Atlantic City doesn’t have a single city employee overseeing its IT infrastructure, resulting in “inefficient, ineffective and unsecure processes,” according to a report by the New Jersey state comptroller [PDF].
Since 2006, the city has outsourced its IT functions to Newark’s New Jersey Institute of Technology, paying $2.47 million over 4 years for services covering the city’s networked PCs, servers and desktop support, GovTech reports. The comptroller recommends that hiring two IT staff members could allow “substantial savings and a full-time dedicated staff available on a daily basis to serve all City departments.”

The report also alleges that city awarded annual contracts to NJIT and a subcontractor without a state-mandated competitive bidding process. Though NJIT is exempt from that process as an education institution, it subcontracted work to a private company, and the city sometimes paid that subcontractor directly, giving the “apperance of an attempt to avoid State bidding requirements,” the Comproller’s Office said in the report.
The report urges the city to develop an IT strategy, improve its computer hardware and software tracking system and review user access to the network.