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If
Gov. Mark Warner has a nagging negative as he
concludes his term of office, it involves the matter
of trust. Paul Goldman, who served Warner as a
political advisor during the 2001 gubernatorial
election campaign, has written that trust is “the
fundamental basis of our elective process.”
Warner
is remembered for television ads during the 2001
campaign in which he pledged emphatically and
repeatedly not to raise taxes. He broke that pledge
and is now identified as the governor who proposed a
more than $1 billion tax increase after the
November, 2003, elections even though he refused to
disclose his tax plan to the voters before that
election.
In
its final months, the Warner administration is
involved in contract negotiations with private
information technology firms to outsource virtually
all of the IT functions of state government.
The
multi-year contract is estimated to be worth $3
billion, making it one of the largest state
contracts ever negotiated by the Commonwealth. It is
important that the Warner administration negotiate
favorable financial terms, but price is not the most
important factor. There are potential risks to the
future effectiveness of state program management and
to the security of sensitive information in state
databases if the final contract lacks adequate
safeguards.
If
state program managers are dependent on private IT
firms to support their functions, they must retain
some control over those services. It is important,
then, to know whether those services will be
outsourced by the private contractor to a foreign
country where control would be problematic.
The
state’s chief information officer is required by
statute to certify that any IT contract the
Commonwealth executes will assure the security of
the information in the state’s databases. How can
adequate security be assured if the services are
performed in another state or in a foreign country?
When
demands were made for the disclosure of contract
details, the Information Technology Investment
Board, which is responsible for the state’s IT
functions, refused to release the information. After
editorial writers called for disclosure, Warner
requested that the Board release the information. It
refused.
A
Virginia governor has the constitutional authority
to require the Board to provide him with the
information, but Warner has declined to use that
power. This is where his candor or lack of it
becomes an issue again.
Not
only does Warner have the power to compel
disclosure, but he also already has the information
in his office. His chief of staff has been directly
involved and, according to persons close to the
matter, has been the driving force in moving the
negotiations along. Warner’s Secretary of
Technology is a member of the Information Technology
Investment Board and has access to the information.
What
this means is that Warner’s public request to the
Board to disclose the contract details was merely a
public relations gesture. Had he been serious about
disclosure, he would have ordered the Board members
to his office and exercised his explicit
constitutional power to require release of the
information to him. Of course, he should have taken
personal responsibility for the decision to withhold
that information since he already had access to it.
The
fact that Warner is playing political games with
this IT contract will come back to haunt him. This
single episode is damaging enough in itself. The
larger problem for Warner is that it appears to be
part of a pattern. Voters are likely to remember his
other, earlier breaches of trust — especially
breaking his no-tax pledge.
--
September 5, 2005
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