Isn’t it rich?
Isn’t it queer,
Losing my timing this late
In my career?
And where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns.
Well, maybe next year.

As we come to the end of our little song and truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story, it’s probably a good idea to draw attention to the lessons that can be learned from this little parable.

• Verizon and its technology partners are not devils incarnate, but government and higher education need to scrutinize carefully any “deals” they may be offering.  ATM provides a great example of a “deal” that was too good to be true.
• The State should not let mega-contracts that Verizon almost certainly will win.  I daresay that one of my more observant readers might be able to identify one such state contract (hint: M-P-L-S) let a few years ago that is supposed to be the latest answer to all of our technology prayers.
• The State is going to make bad bets – like ATM and Oracle at WVU – from time to time.  If those bets are made based on careful study and analysis, they should be considered a cost of doing business.  If those bets are made primarily because a vendor lobbied heavily for them, the people responsible for those bad bets should be held accountable for them.
• Any big technology project like ATM should be staffed properly and by technology professionals, not by employees of Cabinet Secretaries’ offices.  You can’t manage a $1.5 million per year program like ATM without staff unless you want to waste more money than you save.
• Higher education and state government are very different in terms of their attitudes toward and regulation of technology.  Higher education is always going to push the technology envelope, while state government generally is going to muddle along.  This is one reason why higher education, not state government, should take the technology lead.
• Higher education is insulated from the vicissitudes of political changes (or at least it used to be).  The Office of Technology, headed by a gubernatorial appointee and other will-and-pleasure appointees, is not.  We should not put anything as important as technology exclusively under the control of a political organization.

When will we learn?  It certainly doesn’t look like it will be anytime soon.

Well, maybe next year.

Don’t you love farce?
My fault I fear.
I thought that you’d want what I want.
Sorry, my dear.
But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns.
Don’t bother, they’re here.

Although I learned a lot about higher education institutions and how they operate during my Flatwoods meeting with WVNET staff, my main purpose for meeting with them was to learn more about something they called “shared facilities.”

I learned pretty quickly that shared facilities were nothing more than circuits across which multiple organizations’ video, voice and data traveled.  As part of an agreement with the previous Chief Technology Officer to create WVSUN (West Virginia State Unified Network), WVNET had taken primary responsibility for managing them.  Most shared facility circuits, I learned, were a lot more expensive than institution circuits.  In part this was because they were bigger, but also because most crossed two of the State’s four LATAs and thus had to be purchased from long distance providers.  (See “A Baby Bell” for an explanation.)

After meeting with WVNET staff in Flatwoods, I quickly figured out we had three problems: one financial and two legal.

The financial problem:

After identifying all the “free circuits” Verizon had given away on behalf of the Cabinet Secretary of Education and Arts and the shared facility costs that had been shifted to her, even though we were missing hundreds of thousands of dollars in invoices, I realized we owed about $6.5 million on a three-year appropriation of $4.5 million, and that appropriation was supposed to be coming to an end.  So we convened a meeting of key stakeholders, including the people who had circuits they weren’t using.  We told them we would pay for everything we could, but looked to be significantly short of money.  We also told them we would talk to legislators about the situation.

Shortly thereafter, we met with key legislators and staff members and explained the situation.  Fortunately, the legislators promised to continue the appropriation until we could get our house in order, at which point the subsidy would slowly be phased out.  I have always appreciated those legislators and their staff members who trusted us to make things right.

The legal problems:

In addition to the rather large financial problem, we had two not-insignificant legal problems of the constitutional variety.

First, it is unconstitutional to use a later year appropriation to pay for an earlier year service.  (Otherwise, the constitutional requirement to operate under a balanced budget would be meaningless.)  So a continuing appropriation couldn’t solve all of our rather large financial problems.  Indeed the only way some of these telecommunications providers were going to get the money they were owed was to file a claim with the Court of Claims, obtain a judgment, and then have the Legislature make an appropriation, which easily could take two years.

Second, the Legislature had funded the WV2001 Project from lottery revenue, which constitutionally can be spent only on education, tourism and a few other things.  But these shared facilities circuits included other telecommunications traffic for which payment would be unconstitutional.  Interestingly, quite a few shared facilities invoices had been paid by the Department of Education and the Arts in violation of the West Virginia Constitution before I arrived there.  Did anything happen as a result of this Constitutional violation?  No!  As a good friend likes to say: Some laws catch on better than others.  I would add Constitutional provisions to his list.

Luckily, we were able to exploit our legal problems to address our financial problems.  We, for instance, offered AT&T a payment equal to the percentage of traffic that legally could be paid for from lottery funds if they would walk away from the remainder of their (quite valid) claim.

And that is a large part of the story of how WVNET staff and others saved the State of West Virginia more than $1 million, much of which it admittedly never should have incurred, but almost all of which it owed.  And that is why the West Virginia Department of Education and the Arts escaped the telecommunications billing debacle largely unscathed….

Don’t you love farce?…  My fault I fear….

Just when I’d stopped opening doors,
Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours,
Making my entrance again with my usual flair,
Sure of my lines,
No one is there.

Newer, faster, better!  If there’s one difference between higher education and state government, it is that higher education wants the latest technology, while state government seems more content to use current systems, even if cumbersome or unwieldy.

Don’t worry if higher education doesn’t yet have a good practical use for Internet II; institutions want it because no right-thinking research faculty member would come to a school that didn’t have it.  Don’t worry if higher education doesn’t know what on earth to do with Blackboard WebCT Vista’s enterprise distance learning solution; just spend $750K for the license, and distance learning will take off like gangbusters.  Don’t worry if you don’t have a plan to use new technology that West Virginia University is using.  If West Virginia University needs it, so does Glenville State College and Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College.

What’s the only thing higher education loves better than technology?  Someone else to pay for it, of course.  So you can imagine the excitement in higher education Chief Technology Officers’ offices in the late 1990s when Verizon came calling with a too-good-to-be-true deal on telecommunications circuits that would be doing everything from supporting distance learning to handling back office data traffic to managing telephone systems to cooking students’ meals over the next few years.

The too-good-to-be-true part? Higher education and others could have all of this technology for free thanks to a little ole $1.5 million appropriation from the West Virginia Legislature in the West Virginia Department of Education and Arts’ budget.  Every school from West Virginia University to Shepherd College (now University) to West Virginia Northern Community College got hooked up faster than Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire on double coupon day at the local BALCO store.

Surely students benefited from these expenditures, didn’t they?  Well, not at some institutions.  You’ve heard of the “Road to Nowhere.”  At several of our higher education institutions, we had “Circuits to Nowhere.”  Shepherd College, for example, acquired two circuits, to the tune of $600 per circuit per month, over which there was no telecommunications traffic for several years.  And West Virginia Northern Community College was so enamored by these “free circuits” that they didn’t “buy” the cheap kind that Shepherd was buying.  No, they wanted the top-of-the-line DS-3 circuits (cost: $3,800 per month), and they wanted one for each of their three campuses (cost: $11,400 per month/ $136,800 per year).  Did West Virginia Northern need these expensive circuits?  Let just say they dropped them like laundered nickels from a casino slot machine as soon as they learned they had to pay for them.

How did I discover these things?  I certainly didn’t learn about them from Verizon, which must have known there was little or no telecommunications traffic crossing some of these “free circuits.”  I certainly didn’t learn about them from IS&C, which couldn’t even find the bills, much less the circuits.  No, I learned them from two WVNET employees who drove to Flatwoods (ironically WVNET’s future home?) one day to educate me about shared facilities.

Operating in higher education, WVNET has always had to adapt more quickly and be more aware of technological changes than its state government counterpart.  WVNET was the first with mainframe, the first with internet, and its staff were the first to tell me what really was occurring with the WV2001 Project….

Making my entrance again with my usual flair…. Sure of my lines….  No one is there….

Isn’t it bliss?
Don’t you approve?
One who keeps tearing around,
One who can’t move.
Where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns.

When I came to the West Virginia Department of Education and the Arts as Chief of Staff in 2001, I found a large stack of telecommunications invoices, a Cabinet Secretary who wisely was refusing to pay them, and a staff who stared blankly at me when I asked them any question about the WV2001 Project or its invoices.

The invoices were from both long-distance telecommunications vendors and the West Virginia Information Services and Communications Division, the Office of Technology’s precursor.  It didn’t take me very long to figure out that I didn’t have all of the bills and, even more importantly, that I didn’t have a clue whether we should pay for them.  It also didn’t take me long to figure out that Verizon and others were busy complaining to every politician who would listen that they weren’t being paid by their biggest customer – the State of West Virginia.

So I asked my blankly-staring staff (good people in over their heads) who could help us figure out the WV2001 project, given that the person in charge of it had made an abrupt exit from IS&C shortly before I started work for the Cabinet Secretary.  At the meeting they arranged for me, I met the state’s technology leaders, many of whom I came to respect a great deal: Dr. Jan Fox, Marshall University’s CIO on loan to the Wise Administration; Brenda Williams, director of educational technology for the West Virginia Department of Education; Billy Jack Gregg, Consumer Advocate for the West Virginia Public Service Commission (who hadn’t been invited by us, but came anyway and shook his head back and forth and laughed throughout the entire meeting, which, I must say, was very disconcerting for a brand new Chief of Staff); and Henry Blosser, WVNET’s director.

During that meeting, I learned that these weren’t run-of-the-mill telephone bills about which we were talking, but rather bills for something called telecommunications circuits that could carry video, audio, and data.  This is not what you would have thought from reading the Charleston Newspapers, which were reporting that the State wasn’t paying its telephone bills (which also was true).  Additionally, I learned that our bills from long-distance carriers were for something called shared facilities, circuits over which multiple organizations’ video, audio, and data traveled, and most of my IS&C bills were from Verizon for circuits to specific organizations.

What I didn’t learn until much later was that many of the shared facilities bills had been shifted from IS&C to the West Virginia Department of Education and the Arts shortly before Governor Wise took office, not because the Department had made a commitment to pay them, but rather because IS&C had failed to rebill them by the end of the state fiscal year, and agencies with expiring funds (supposedly) could not pay for them.  (WV2001 project funds did not expire.)  Older and wiser, I now know that most people who claimed they couldn’t pay these bills could have paid (and later did pay some of) them from other non-expiring revenue (admittedly unbudgeted for this purpose, but still available).

At the end of the meeting, I asked WVNET director Henry Blosser why these monies had not been placed in his agency’s budget.  He shook his head knowingly and smiled.  Twenty-five plus years of government service had taught him not to say too much too soon….

Where are the clowns?…  Send in the clowns….

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?…

Over the last few days, I have been providing background information about WVNET’s role in the larger world of technology.  Today I would like to veer off in a different direction and remind everyone that WVNET is about more than technology: It is about people.

First, the people WVNET serves:

• The Raleigh County adult who is pursuing a degree by completing distance learning classes late into the night after a long day of work at a low paying job.
• The Tucker County judge who holds a pretrial hearing via teleconference.
• The little old lady from rural Pocahontas County who uses dial-up because it’s the only available option and calls WVNET’s help desk with questions – and to chat.
• The administrative staff at Blue Ridge Community and Technical College who use back office technology housed at WVNET to operate more efficiently and effectively and ultimately maintain lower tuition costs and provide better service for their students.
• The Ohio County high school student researching Marie Antoinettte online for her term paper.

These are the people with whom WVNET is concerned day in and day out.  Have you heard ANY of them discussed?

Second, the people at WVNET:

Over the last four years, WVNET has been under perpetual assault.  On three separate occasions, I had to talk directly to WVNET staff about the latest assault, twice in person and once by video conference.  I remember explaining one time that another organization surveying and marking off their property really did not have permission to do so.  I remember explaining another time that legislation giving the Higher Education Policy Commission authority to sell the only property it truly had authority to sell didn’t automatically mean their property was going to be sold and their jobs lost.  I remember explaining yet another time that all the rumors they were hearing from others in the Morgantown community about their jobs were not accurate.  And I remember each time talking to those employees ALONE.

I also remember a meeting where everyone was so busy fighting over who would benefit from the sale of the WVNET property – West Virginia University, some or all higher education institutions, or the Higher Education Policy Commission – that no one said a word about WVNET’s employees.

What does this perpetual uncertainty produce?  I will tell you.

• A suspicious workforce who had to wonder whether I was telling them the truth as they peered out their windows and saw surveying stakes in WVNET ground that suggested I was not.
• A demoralized workforce, many of whom are now gone, who knew good work didn’t matter and regularly asked me for reference letters.
• Higher education institutions fearful of looking to WVNET for new services because it soon might not be there.
• A facility that was not properly maintained because you don’t want to make a significant investment in a building that isn’t going to be there five years from now.

WVNET staff is not perfect, and most of them would be the first to tell you that.  But they also would tell you they did not deserve to be treated as they have been – and they would be right.

In 1982 AT&T, also known as “Ma Bell,” agreed to a break-up that led to the creation of a series of Baby Bells, including Bell Atlantic, which ultimately merged with other carriers and became Verizon.  The agreement divided the United States into local access and transport areas (LATAs) inside which Baby Bells would be allowed to operate and across which only long distance providers would be allowed to operate.

The goal of the U.S. Department of Justice in entering into this agreement was to promote telecommunications competition in a post-breakup world.  Competition was fostered on the long distance (LATA-crossing) side, but was less successful on the local provider side.  At the local level, it is much more difficult to ensure effective competition among telecommunications providers, primarily because they often have monopoly control over telecommunications circuits.

The State of West Virginia has two available mechanisms to ensure that reasonable telecommunications rates are charged and competition fostered.  The first and most frequently discussed, the West Virginia Public Service Commission, can control costs by regulating certain rates and business practices.  To represent the interests of consumers in such proceedings, the PSC employs a Consumer Advocate.  For many years, Verizon and other providers had a fierce foe in Consumer Advocate Billy Jack Gregg, who fought telecommunications providers tooth and nail on behalf of consumers like you and me.

After 30 years of tireless service as West Virginia’s first and only Consumer Advocate, Mr. Gregg retired from the public sector and founded Billy Jack Gregg Universal Consulting. Still widely regarded as one of West Virginia’s foremost authorities on telecommunications issues, Mr. Gregg continues to provide his expertise to clients on both the consumer and business side. But these days, you’re highly unlikely to hear Mr. Gregg weigh in on any issue concerning Verizon. Rumor has it that Verizon now pays Mr. Gregg a substantial retainer just to keep him from commenting publicly on its maneuvers.

A second and less frequently discussed group – public sector telecommunications purchasers, including K-12, higher education, and state government agencies – also can control costs and foster competition with their procurement practices.  Why?  The public sector – first K-12, then higher education, and then the rest of state government and the courts – are Verizon’s largest customers.

Given this fact, I will pose a counterintuitive proposition: The last thing the State of West Virginia, including education, wants to do is bid out mega-telecommunications contracts to be awarded to a single vendor.  Rather, the State wants to bid out multiple smaller contracts to multiple vendors.

But doesn’t the State want to get the best bang for its buck on telecommunications costs, you ask? And doesn’t an entity like the State get the lowest vendor cost and have the lowest contract management expenses if it bids out mega-contracts?  Yes and no.

In the short run, you possibly could attain these benefits if you assume that the bidders are on a level playing field, which they are not, and that political considerations would play no role in the award.  Verizon, with control of so much infrastructure, particularly middle mile infrastructure referred to in a previous post, has a leg up on everyone else and is the entity most likely to win the mega-contract.

But even if the first round of bidding were truly open and competitive, future rounds would not be as the entity that got the initial contract could quickly exploit its monopoly status and drive current and future competition out of the market, resulting in higher long-term costs for the State of West Virginia and its citizens.

Tying these thoughts back into a discussion of WVNET, the State is not like any other single private sector vendor, which almost always would benefit from collective bidding of telecommunications services.  As an entity large enough to promote harmful monopoly, the State should be strategic in its thinking about contracting and should not automatically bring K-12, higher education and state and local government together for purposes of telecommunications contracting or bid all parts of its infrastructure at once.

Technological advances are changing the calculus I have described, but we will have an 800 lbs. telecommunications “baby” into the foreseeable future.  And that is an important consideration in these proceedings.

PS: If this blog mysteriously ceases publication, one of two things happened.  My own personal Verizon account was shut down … or I received a VERY LUCRATIVE consulting contract and am honoring the terms of that contract.  (Others have posited a third scenario, but I remain optimistic, even as I lock my doors.)

So much to comment upon it is hard to figure out where to start:

• The latest plan is to consolidate WVNET, sell its property, and move the equipment to Charleston or Flatwoods? Why would you not consolidate everything to Morgantown where you have qualified staff and a machine room at the ready?  [Insert obvious answer here.]
• What about the 16 to 24 months West Virginia University needs to move services to its campus data center (which, by the way, was in a flood plain the last time I checked)?  [Insert obvious answer here.]
• A proposed follow-up question to the statement that the Higher Education Policy Commission owns Bluefield State College and Concord University property, too: So the 2007 legislation was aimed at helping the Commission sell Bluefield State College’s and Concord University’s property, not the WVNET property?  [Insert obvious answer here.]

Why doesn’t everyone just take a deep breath and admit one thing?  There is no well-thought-out plan to do anything other than put up a “For Sale” sign on the WVNET property.  I don’t mean to sound so bemused/ cynical/ sarcastic/ strident (take your pick), but seriously … technology is too important to our public schools, our colleges, our courts, our government, and our citizens not to have solid transition plans in place before selling property as important to the State as that on which WVNET sits.  Even more important, the environment in which good plans are developed and implemented requires trust, and there’s not likely to be much trust after all of this.

For you and me, moving is a difficult experience.  For an organization like WVNET, it would be a logistical nightmare.  A nightmare, mind you, that could be accomplished, but a nightmare nonetheless.

In an earlier post on WVNET, I referenced logistical challenges if WVNET were to move from its current location, as well as significant costs associated with such a move.  Why is that?

• When you and I make a move, we generally pack everything, shut down for a while, and make our move.  That would not be possible for WVNET.  Can you imagine what would happen if no public education teacher or legislator could send an email or access the internet for days?  If colleges could not register students or offer online instruction?  If the state court system could not hold online hearings?  The number of complaints directed at WVNET, higher education system offices, the governor’s office, and others would be astronomical, and WVNET would receive front-page news coverage, just not the kind WVNET would like.  WVNET has a backup generator, tested regularly, that kicks on almost instantly when it loses power to prevent even minimal down-time much less this kind of down-time.
• Moving WVNET also is not as simple as packing up a few desks, chairs, computer monitors and hard drives and some old papers and office supplies and loading them on a moving truck.  Millions of dollars worth of equipment are sitting in WVNET’s machine room right now.  Much of that equipment was assembled onsite and is highly vulnerable to damage if moved.  Although there are maintenance agreements for much of that equipment, the provisions of those agreements would not apply to damage caused during a physical move like that being proposed.

So how would you orchestrate such a move?

• In a perfect world with unlimited resources, you would buy all new equipment and allow WVNET to transfer systems one by one over a period of days, weeks and months.  But re-outfitting a facility like WVNET from scratch probably would be prohibitively expensive and wipe out all or most of the money it would receive from the sale of the property.
• More likely, WVNET would be expected to make the move at the least cost possible.  This probably would mean buying some equipment where there would be no other way to facilitate a move; renting equipment like a power generator until the current generator could be relocated in the last step of the move; disassembling very expensive pieces of equipment, packing them, moving them, and reassembling them, probably with assistance from some of the vendors from whom the equipment was purchased (there, of course, would be a bill for that); and making major portions of the move between midnight to 6 AM on Sunday mornings over a period of weeks or months.  (The adult student trying to complete her online coursework during this time would just have to suffer.)  During the period of the move, WVNET would incur dual costs for many items.
• The worst job in all of this probably would be that of the move coordinator.  The move coordinator would have to go down the WVNET services and equipment list item by item and figure out how to orchestrate a move for each item while minimizing both costs and disruption.  The Gantt chart developed to accomplish this move would go on for pages and pages.
• The monetary aspects of the move also would be problematic.  Typically the transfer of funds from buyer to seller does not occur until the time of closing after a move of this size and scope has been accomplished.  From where is the money going to come to orchestrate this move before Mylan Pharmaceuticals pays for the property?  As a state agency, WVNET can’t simply go to its local bank and get a loan.
• And let’s not forget all of the problems that arise during a simple move.  Workers packing instead of working.  Broken and missing items.  Movers not where they should be when they should be.  Packing and unpacking that takes longer than expected.
• And we’re not done yet.  There is a lot of telecommunications fiber going into the area where WVNET is located because of what WVNET and its neighbors do.  As a result, WVNET cannot move just anywhere.  It must move to a place where a whole lot of fiber is located and/or can be located.  If not, you’re talking more time and money.

Several years ago, WVNET staff made an initial pass at calculating some of the costs associated with moving.  I do not remember precisely what those numbers were, but they were staggering.  I hope this helps you understand why I have been laughing at what I have been reading.  Even I could not pull off the sprezzatura needed for this project.

The Charleston Daily Mail published an interesting article today that illustrates the difficulty of meeting technology needs in a political climate.  The article explains that much of the $126 million in federal stimulus money leveraged for broadband is going to Verizon to build something being characterized as the “middle mile.”  The “middle mile” will get close enough to rural communities that other companies will step in to build out the “last mile” to customers’ homes and businesses, or so the theory goes.  And guess what?  Verizon will own the “middle mile” circuits that the federal government is paying $126 million to install.

Is that wrong?  Something doesn’t seem right, but I am unsure.  Some thoughts and then a history lesson:

First, the thoughts:

• A lot of money will have been wasted if no one actually installs the “last mile,” but it’s possible that the “middle mile” truly is a larger barrier to broadband access than the “last mile.”  I do not know.
• Why would the State turn over millions of dollars worth of infrastructure paid for with federal dollars for free?  Strangely, this is the public sector equivalent of Dow’s $10 million “gift,” but makes far less business sense than Dow’s financial move.  Why not at least put the new network infrastructure out for bid to see if someone thinks it has a value of more than $0 and then use any funds generated for additional broadband expansion?
• While I question the choice of Verizon, I do realize that it is easier (but possibly not cheaper) to deal with Verizon, the telecommunications Goliath, than a large group of Davids like FiberNet, CityNet and Ntelos.

Second, a history lesson: In the late 1990s, Verizon convinced State government leaders that the wave of the future was asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technology.  So the State ponied up $1.5 million per year for all kinds of educational institutions and state government agencies to get the new ATM circuits through the WV2001 Project.  Verizon effectively wanted to hedge its ATM bet, and the State of West Virginia was more than happy to comply.  But guess what?  ATM were not the wave of the future.  Verizon and its partner the State of West Virginia bet wrong.

Why was the State happy to comply with Verizon’s request?  Verizon is very powerful politically, and no one, including skeptical state technology officials, were about to stand in its way.  Given the powerful technology interests out there and their willingness to use their political power for financially beneficial ends (and I don’t blame them for that nor expect them to behave any differently) and given the large amounts of money spent by the State on technology, we need technology agencies that are very stable and insulated from political influence.  In 2000, then Chief Technology Officer Sam Tully thought that entity was WVNET and transferred control of much of the State’s telecommunications infrastructure to WVNET.

The rarely-studied lessons of history are intriguing.

As for today, WVNET does far more than I possibly could describe here – and light years more than you’re reading in the news articles and reports discussing WVNET.  By way of illustration:

• WVNET supports institutions’ Sungard Banner data systems to various degrees.  Sungard Banner is back office software for our colleges and includes student record, financial aid, and finance modules, just to name a few.
• WVNET hosts WebCT for numerous institutions.  WebCT is higher education’s primary distance learning system.
• WVNET supports K-12 and others with internet and other comparable services and ensures that K-12 maximizes e-rate discounts (federal discounts provided thanks in significant part to Senator Rockefeller, by the way).
• WVNET manages significant segments of the state telecommunications infrastructure, which combines K-12, higher education, state government and other technology traffic.  K-12 is the largest user, followed by higher education, followed by state government.
• WVNET serves as WVU’s major back-up site and provides similar services for others.
• WVNET coordinates cross-institutional procurements.

While I could continue with my list, the real issue is that each service that WVNET provides needs to be analyzed thoroughly: (1) What is provided? (2) For whom is it provided? (3) At what cost?  (4) Does someone else provide the same service?  (5) Is it something that’s needed, and will it be needed in two years/five years? (6) Is the charge reasonable and could the services be obtained elsewhere more cheaply? (7) Are there other economies of scale that should be taken into consideration?

A thorough analysis, I am sure, would find things that should change, but it also would find that WVNET provides important services that are not readily replaceable, particularly by smaller institutions. Although the proposals to shut down WVNET have been on the frontburner for a long time, nobody has undertaken a thorough analysis of WVNET’s portfolio of services.  And until they do, no one can argue effectively that WVNET should be shut down, moved, or merged.

Finally, any analysis of WVNET should address the significant logistical challenges and costs involved in a move.  On the logistics front, WVNET has a lot of equipment and circuits that must somehow be transferred seamlessly if higher education, K-12 and state government in West Virginia are not to come to a grinding halt.  (Insert joke about whether anyone would notice here.  But the truth is they would.)  This probably means creating additional redundancy in advance of a move. On the cost front, it is possible that significant moving costs should be incurred for the greater good, but those costs will be far more significant than political and education leaders currently realize.

I have been critical of late of many poorly-thought-out plans for major change.  The WVNET proposal provides yet another case in point.  Fortunately, the House of Delegates appears poised to make higher education perform its due diligence before tearing WVNET asunder.

Before anyone does anything with WVNET, it would be a good idea if someone learned what it truly does.  The statements I’ve been reading in print miss the mark rather dramatically.  Equally important, someone needs to learn about the telecommunications infrastructure going into the WVNET site … and, while they’re at it, whose emails cross its servers.  Finally, there’s one last thing people should know, but they’ll have to look to others for the answer.  Technology is not all that complicated.

UPDATE: 10 March 2010 @ 11:47 AM.  As requested, I edited the first link so that it takes you to the document to which I was referring.  I must say that I am amazed by the number of views of this post.  I passed the previous record for most views in an entire day before 9:00 AM this morning and am very close to the “double” mark now.

Senator Rockefeller described the grant as “a real game-changer in West Virginia,” and I could not agree more.  Broadband access is a critical component of rural economic growth.  In a world where some people can work from almost anywhere, they can’t work from an area that lacks basic broadband access.

Stop using the Microsoft Office Suite of products and begin using OpenOffice.  Microsoft may provide great education discounts, but OpenOffice is open-source and free and, more importantly, just as good, if not better.  OpenOffice offers complements to Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access, as well as some other programs, in a single package, and it can convert files to other formats quite easily.

I am embarrassed to admit that I was responsible for a state technology agency for five years and didn’t know about OpenOffice.  I’m making up for lost time.

• Almost every day exactly 2 of you access my blog by typing “dennis taylor” in a search engine. Why do you not use capital letters?
• Every day at least 10 and sometimes a lot more of you access my blog through my business website.  Why do you not access it directly?
• Every day more than 30 of you access my blog using an RSS feed.  Why have you chosen sprezzatura!?
• Every day several of you access my blog from the link on Fifth Column.  Why?  I do not have Josh’s penchant for profanity, and while we both have a flair for writing, our styles are very different.
• Almost every day someone discovers my blog for the first time … and reads post after post after post.
• Some poor schmuck recently found my blog while looking for information about psoriasis.  Others discover my blog using some very bizarre search terms.

More tidbits:

• As a group, you are far more interested in research (or possibly dermatology) than in the financial services industry.  But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop posting on the latter subject.
• As a group, you rarely follow the links to other resources that I provide within my posts.
• If you click on any link from my blog, it’s likely to be the link to my business website.
• More of you read my blog while at work than at home – and some of you, like my former co-workers, are daring enough to access my blog despite having your computer monitored by your employer.

Still more tidbits:

• If you leave a comment, I often can figure out your general location or more even if you don’t use your real name or provide an email address.
• If you leave a comment, I can edit it to correct a typo or make it say something completely different.

Big Brother is watching!

• Several months ago, I posted a comment on Facebook stating that I had gotten my law license back.  (Don’t jump to conclusions!  I just changed my status from “active but not practicing” to “active and practicing” because I wanted to be able to do legal work again.)  In response to a friend’s comment, I explained that I did not have to retake the West Virginia bar exam to get my law license back and I didn’t know if I could pass it now.  The next thing I knew I was seeing an advertisement for a bar review course on Facebook.  Why?  The reference to the bar exam?  My profile, which indicates that I have a JD degree?  Both?
• As I mentioned yesterday, I just made the conversion from NetNewsWire to Google Reader for RSS feeds.  On the right side of my RSS feed home page is a light blue box containing RSS feeds in which Google “thinks” I may be interested.  At the top of the list?  Dermatology Times, which promotes itself as the leading news magazine for dermatologists.  I promise you I have no unusual rashes or break-outs, so why would Google “think” I might be interested?  Well I have written two posts lately in which I used dermatological wordplay – “Heartbreak of Psoriasis” – about the dermatologist anchor tenant in Huntington’s Kinetic Park – and “Chemical Peel, Anyone?” – about the South Charleston Tech Center, which used to be the nation’s most significant chemicals research facility – that appeared in my Google Reader display.  Furthermore, in the process of drafting an upcoming post about the WVU Research Park, I went looking for another dermatological term for punmanship purposes.  As a result, apparently, Google “thinks” I may want an RSS feed to Dermatology Times.

This type of marketing troubles me.  Will Big Brother ultimately be able to figure out my every want and desire and lead me straight to it, which would not be a good thing, I assure you?  Or should I take comfort that Facebook’s marketing arm works so poorly it “thinks” I’m studying for the bar exam and Google’s marketing arm works so poorly it “thinks” I’m a dermatologist?

• Blogs.  Not too many years ago, I remember someone informing me that a former co-worker (HippieKiller) had a blog and my asking what exactly a blog was.  Today, I write this blog and read seven blogs regularly via RSS feed.  I had thought technology was going to make writing a dying art.  The rise of blogging suggests otherwise.  I like it that most bloggers, or at least the ones I read, do not disguise their opinions like traditional media often do.  If they think something is BS, they call it BS.  The world is a better place because of that.  Plus you can incorporate video, pictures and audio – not that you would know that from reading my blog.
• Facebook. I’m convinced Facebook, the main social networking site, has changed relationships and social networking forever.  No longer will people lose contact with high school and college classmates or business and social acquaintances.  Facebook allows us to stay just well enough informed about people we’d never pick up the phone to call.  Additionally, Facebook is a wonderful tool for non-profit organizations.  I love to read about the activities of the non-profits with which I am or have been involved, and I’m sure it makes me more likely to donate when I’m reminded regularly of the great work these groups do.  Having said all that, I’ll never understand the attraction of Mafia Wars, Farmville, or quizzes; people with too much time on their hands, I guess.
• LinkedIn. I’d never heard of LinkedIn, the main business networking site, before a friend invited me to join a few months ago.  They have a tool that allows you to figure out how many of your address book contacts are LinkedIn members.  I was blown away to discover that 194 were.  Of course, I’ve never done anything other than sign up, which probably defeats the purpose.
• MeetUp. Unless you’re interested in joining Kanawha Valley Hookers (a now-defunct group for crocheting, I quickly and sadly discovered) or becoming a charter member of the John Birch Society, don’t waste your time – yet.
• RSS Feeds. How did I ever live without them?  Now I can choose which news I want to check out regularly and it’s all brought to me in one place.  I was just forced to make the move from NetNewsWire to GoogleReader.  I think both are fabulous tools.
• StumbleUpon. For those who love serendipity and voyages of discovery, there’s no place better than StumbleUpon, which learns what you like and helps you discover more of it, or one of its competitors.  I think it’s the perfect accompaniment to an RSS Feed when you have some free time to look for interesting things.
• iTunes. Now that I know the difference between an iPod, an iPhone, and iTunes, I’ve discovered I’m happiest with iTunes.  I never watch regular television anymore.  I buy a season of a TV show that I’ve heard is good through i-Tunes and watch episode after episode over nights and weeks.  Good television is so much better when you watch episodes back to back – and without commercial interruption.  The only problem: there’s no one with whom to discuss your latest episode of Battlestar Galactica or Mad Men – they either watched it six months ago or haven’t seen it.
• Twitter. Ever trying to keep up with the latest, I established a Twitter account.  I have not tweeted once.  The only good use I can come up with for it: alerting someone to a good article or blog post, but who really wants to deal with tinyurl.com?  (But isn’t it cool that someone thought of tinyurl to meet a need.)  They say brevity is the soul of wit; I say it’s the soul of twits and twitterers.
• YouTube and Flickr.  Not places I visit regularly.
• Websites.  They’re coming to seem a bit old-fashioned (unless you call them portals and charge a lot for them).  I do not understand why so many people spend so much money on them and then fail to keep them updated.  (Note to self: Finish website.)

The New York Times reported last week that our machines are becoming smarter than we, and scientists are debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems.  A threat?  Not for a while, I would hope.

The New York Times also reported last week that traders like Goldman Sachs – the bad guys in case you don’t know about the internet bubble, housing bubble and oil bubble – are beginning to make a lot of money by subtly manipulating share prices with high-speed, high-frequency trading.  The issue came to light when a former Goldman Sachs computer programmer left with secret computer codes, which a federal prosecutor now claims could be used to “manipulate markets in unfair ways.”  Hhhmmm?!?  If the programmer could use them to manipulate markets in unfair ways, how was Goldman Sachs using them?  A threat?  Yes, and now.

The basic scam in the Internet Age is pretty easy even for the financially illiterate to grasp. Companies that weren’t much more than potfueled ideas scrawled on napkins by uptoolate bongsmokers were taken public via [Initial Public Offerings (IPOs)], hyped in the media and sold to the public for mega-millions. It was as if banks like Goldman were wrapping ribbons around watermelons, tossing them out 50-story windows and opening the phones for bids. In this game you were a winner only if you took your money out before the melon hit the pavement.

- Matt Taibbi

How was this bubble created?  Remember the four elements from yesterday’s post:

• An Intangible Market.  The internet, which really is just a bunch of interconnected electronic circuits whose use might somehow produce money for the user, was the ultimate intangible market.
• A Broken Rule.  Prior to the internet bubble, there was a long-standing rule concerning which companies were appropriate for IPOs.  The company had to have been in existence for five years and produced a profit for three consecutive years.  Near the end of the internet bubble, tech IPOs were being initiated for companies that had never made a profit and would not make a profit into the foreseeable future.
• An Insider.  The investment bank offered executives sweetheart deals for IPO shares resulting in money being diverted from the company’s bank account to the CEO’s and CFO’s bank accounts.  In return the investment bank was promised additional business.
• A Hedge.  As the facilitator of an IPO, an investment bank earned a commission on the amount of money it raised.  The big risk for the investment bank was that it wouldn’t be able to dupe people into investing enough in a shaky IPO.

This reminds me of another technology procurement story a few weeks ago.  In that story, Phil Kabler revealed that the West Virginia Office of Technology was trying to issue a sole-source contract to 20/10 Consulting to provide consulting services for the state’s massive new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.  I had seen the sole-source documents earlier and thought it funny that anyone would assert with a straight face that only one vendor could possibly provide the requested services.

It wasn’t until Kabler’s column that I realized that 20/10 Consulting was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Steptoe and Johnson, a large local law firm, which made the claim all that much more absurd.  The Office of Technology’s sole-source effort ultimately was rejected, and it appears to have placed the human resources portion of the consulting services contract out for bid this week.

I do not know what it is about technology, but I have repeatedly watched state agencies and higher education institutions be taken to the cleaners by vendors selling the latest and greatest technological wonder.  Indeed the State spent at least $20 million in the late 1990s and early 2000s on ATM communications technology, which left the state with little to show for the effort besides a multi-million dollar billing mess that took years to clean up.  I’ve been told West Virginia University has spent more than that trying to make its Oracle financial system work.

I also can’t begin to estimate how many millions of dollars higher education and state government have spent on “glorified websites” (a term coined by Senator Helmick, as I recall).  If you call your website a “portal,” I’ve discovered, the going rate for website development triples, so everyone now has “portals.”

Imagine my amazement last month when I was able to create my own portal/glorified website without paying anyone the $2,500 I had budgeted for it.  I’ll be glad to build a comparable “portal” for someone else for a cool $7,500 ($2,500 x 3 for calling it a portal).

If the State successfully implements an effective ERP system with the $60 million in pocket change that the Legislature so kindly provided, I will be very surprised.

Most surprising, though, is that despite identifying more than 1,000 studies of online learning, the U.S. Department of Education could not find enough quality studies to draw meaningful conclusions about online learning in the K-12 schools.  Given all the money spent on technology at the K-12 level, this is a stunning finding.  In West Virginia, the State alone will spend approximately $22.85 million for technology at the K-12 level during the next fiscal year, and this does not include additional local and federal funding.  West Virginia is not alone in spending significant amounts of money on technology and online learning.

The study does not address cost or the counter-intuitive fact that online learning often costs more than face-to-face learning.