Isn’t it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
You in mid-air.
Send in the clowns.

As some of you probably have guessed, I have a much more extensive technology background than people viewing my resume otherwise might expect.  The reason: I spent more than eight years of my life discreetly cleaning up messes for two different state agencies, and many of those messes happened to be of the technological variety.

Today I begin to discuss one of those technological debacles in greater detail – the WV2001 project – because so much of relevance to WVNET can be learned from it.  In exposing this spectacle, I make the assumption that all applicable statutes of limitations for crimes of incompetence (no malice was involved) probably have run.

Now turn back your clocks to the period before the first major technology bust when half the world thought an internet startup selling the latest earwax removal product was a sound investment and the other half believed most high school and college classes would be online within five years.  Into this tech-crazy world of the mid- to late-1990s comes Verizon with its knight-in-shining-armour proposal to keep West Virginia from being left behind by constructing a massive ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) infrastructure to support the expected exponential growth in technology use.

Never ones to be left outside the big tent when the circus comes to town, the West Virginia Legislature quickly appropriated $1.5 million annually to cover the State’s price of admission.  This appropriation, which appeared in the West Virginia Department of Education and the Arts’ budget, would support higher education, K-12, library and other agency buy-ins to the bright, shiny, new high-tech ATM network.  The idea was this: the State would pay for higher education institutions to buy and maintain T-1 and DS-3 circuits to transport data, voice, and video for 14 months, at the end of which these circuits would be so central to operations that everyone would print money on their bright, shiny, new high-tech color copiers to keep them.

The circuits, of course, were not cheap: a T-1 line cost $600 per month, a DS-3 line cost $3,800, and an OC-3 line cost $7,200 as I recall.  But there was a bit of a sleight of hand involved because that was not the only charge: T-1 and DS-3 circuits have to connect to other circuits, which the State also purchased.  Circuits that crossed LATAs (discussed in a previous post) were purchased from long distance providers like AT&T, while circuits within LATAs, including organization T-1s and DS-3s, were purchased primarily from West Virginia’s cute little “Baby Bell” Verizon.

On the state government side, the person who took responsibility for this initiative worked for IS&C, the precursor to what is now known at the West Virginia Office of Technology.  As best I can tell, he spent most of his time running around the State making sure everyone got hooked up to these bright, shiny circuits.  What he did not do was bother to keep track of the costs … or pay the bills ….

And watching this technology spectacle from their seats in the balcony, like Statler and Waldorf from The Muppet Show, were the wizened technology veterans at WVNET, who had been in the technology business for more than 25 years….

Isn’t it rich?…