The Capitol Fax Blog » Ryan trial stuff

Thursday, Dec 15, 2005

This is a good example of how the Ryan trial is going.

The director of the computer department in the secretary of state’s office under George Ryan testified Wednesday that IBM lobbyists helped him get the job and he assured them that he thought the office should switch to a multimillion-dollar IBM computer.

Once hired, he played a major part in the conversion from an old, overloaded computer to a $25 million IBM model, Frank Cavallaro told jurors hearing the former governor’s racketeering and fraud trial.

Federal prosecutors say Ryan’s decision to buy the IBM computer shows how an elite circle of well-connected Ryan friends, including co-defendant Larry Warner, made money off state contracts and leases when Ryan was Illinois secretary of state.

And then at the bottom of the story we get this.

Questioned by Ryan attorney Julie Bauer, Cavallaro said that he genuinely believed the state was right to buy the IBM system. He said only a few states anywhere in the nation at the time were using anything other than IBM-compatible systems for driver records and the like.

Emphasis added.

- posted by Rich Miller

6 Comments

- zatoichi - Thursday, Dec 15, 05 @ 8:21 am:
To paraphrase Claude Raines “I am shocked, shocked that gambling/cheating/questionable ethics/behind the scene deals/money buys ‘favors’ is going on in Illinois..eh Casablanca. We must clean this up immediately!”

In the corner, my mother says “If everyone jumped off the cliff……”

- Extreme Wisdom - Thursday, Dec 15, 05 @ 9:06 am:
It isn’t only whether the system was “the right one”. As a citizen, I’d like to know whether there was an open bidding process, whether other systems were considered, and whether the system eventually purchased came with fat maintenance contracts, commissions, and the like.

If you are going to ask people to buy the argument that only IBM could supply this system, then you are going to have to consider that only Haliburton & KBR can cap oil fires and rebuild Iraqi infrastructure.

That’s a stretch in both cases.

Google the words “rent seeking” and apply the concept to virutally every major government project/iniative.

The only solution is citizen oversight, and if citizens don’t care to do so, they get the government they deserve.

The impending Blago v. Topinka race is our just reward.

- Anonymous - Thursday, Dec 15, 05 @ 9:34 am:
Certainly the state of computing technology in state government isn’t where it needs to be yet, and I’m sure that some current state employees can cite examples of inefficiency that are unsettling, but I can tell you that at the end of Cavallaro’s reign as head of the CMS computing department after 2002, CMS was so married to IBM technology to the point where it really hampered state goverment operations that it bordered on criminal. You really had to wonder how anyone could be so incompetent as to build an operation that functioned so poorly. It’s almost a relief to learn that they were on the take just so you don’t have to face the fact that maybe they were completely incompetent.

- cermak_rd - Thursday, Dec 15, 05 @ 11:28 am:
That system was a mainframe computer. At the time there was only a handful of companies making mainframes (the so-called seven dwarves). Choosing IBM would have been seen as a safe choice and of course support would have to go along with a computer of that magnitude. And the existing Honeywell-Bull system would have been getting overloaded at that time, I’m surprised it had been adequate before then.

And IBM, as a result of a consent decree, had a very strong policy against any kind of bribes, kickbacks etc. so any skimming had to take place between the middle men.

- shelbyville - Thursday, Dec 15, 05 @ 1:45 pm:
A bidding system was not required at the time the computers were purchased, so that doesn’t come into play. Did Kjellander’s name coming into play surprise anyone?

- Tertius - Thursday, Dec 15, 05 @ 6:11 pm:
Well, there is a big difference been an IBM System and an “IBM Compatible” system.

Most municipalities I’ve worked for couldn’t afford genuine IBM systems - they all went with a compatible system. In fact, the one gov’t office I worked in that started with Apple in the early 90’s switched out to IBM compatible, at great cost, because overall the equip was too expensive to buy as we got new staff. And “REAL” IBM wasn’t any cheaper than Apple… but the clone vendors were much more affordable.

Not saying this indicates there was wrongdoing - just that “we bought IBM because it was the standard…” seems like a pretty thin excuse.

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