City IT staffers upgraded their golf skills

MFP INQUIRY

TORONTO - Mel Lastman was wary of pursuing a public inquiry into computer and software leasing deals until he heard the city had acquired considerably more Oracle database licences than it actually needed, a commission heard recently.

During his third day on the stand at the Toronto Computer Leasing Inquiry, the City of Toronto's mayor continued to answer questions about the state of the city at the time of Y2K and concerns around conflict of interest. The inquiry's goal is to determine how the city's computer hardware and software leasing deal originally thought to be worth $43 million escalated to more than $80 million.

The inquiry also heard that while the complexity and uncertainty of Y2K loomed, senior IT staffers at city hall could often be found on the golf course, including the city's executive director of IT, Jim Andrew, CFO Wanda Liczyk and Lana Viinamae, the director of the Year 2000 project. Through the summer and early fall of 1999, inquiry documents show vendors including Bell Mobility, Cisco Systems, Compugen, Oracle, Dell, Sun Microsystems, Novell, Toshiba, Lexmark, IBM, Compaq and others entertained Andrew and other staffers on golf courses such as Glen Abbey and Lionhead.

During his third day appearing as a witness for the inquiry, Lastman was questioned by MFP counsel David Moore about the practice of city officials being entertained by vendors.

"Would it be a surprise to you that city officials were being entertained?" Moore asked.

"When I saw this, I was shocked. The first thing that came to mind is when are they working? And I can tell you, this will come to an end.

"A golf game is at least four or live hours and they're not back at work from morning to night," said Lastman, adding he would "maybe stop this free golf thing once and for all."

With respect to the question of conflict of interest, Lastman said that while the practice of employees being entertained by vendors may be acceptable in the private sector, "you don't deal with cities the same way."

Moore suggested to Lastman that in the fall of 2001 when city council was debating whether to hold a public inquiry, Lastman was in favour of settling a pending legal battle with MFP as opposed to a public inquiry.

"But the Oracle issue was the straw that broke the camel's back?" Moore asked.

"Yes, it changed my mind but I still wanted to settle and I still wanted an inquiry too," said Lastman. In later questioning he said he was concerned a public inquiry would undermine the legal action MFP and the city had begun against each other over the Y2K leasing contracts.

"The issue of concern was that somehow the city decided to acquire 10,000 Oracle licences and the current view was that was a gross miscalculation?" Moore said.

"Yes," said Lastman. "We were told we definitely did not need 10,000 licences." Lastman added that he tried to ask why that many were purchased, but couldn't get a clear answer from his staff.

The proposal for Oracle products was for five years and priced at just over $14 million.

According to a city report dated February 1998, Toronto officials believed that by 2001 all staff with access to a computer (about 15,000 ) would require access to an Oracle-based application. The report stated that:

"Based on known demand for consolidated or new systems, it is estimated that the number of licences will increase from the current 504 to over 2,500 in 1998 and increase to almost 6,000 in 1999 and that all city staff with access to a computer will require access to an Oracle-based application by 2001."

By Jennifer Brown

Special to TIG

Copyright Plesman Publications Ltd. Jan 2003
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved