Failed Calaveras Technology Project Cost $400K

By Dana M. Nichols, Record Staff Writer -

Calaveras County spent $400,000 on software for a document-management system that never worked properly, the grand jury said Friday in a scathing report about the county's Technology Services Department.

The grand jury report also said that Technology Services Director Howard Stohlman has not had his performance reviewed by the county administrative officer during his 16-year tenure.

Stohlman, in turn, "rarely does performance reviews on his employees," the report said.

Stohlman, reached by email Friday, declined to comment on the grand jury's report.

"I'm still preparing my response to the report and won't be commenting until it's complete," Stohlman wrote.

The grand jury report focused on the effort to convert county government to an electronic-document system. Many county documents and records are on paper, and the county spends $7,000 a year to store those documents, according to the grand jury.

In March 2006, the Board of Supervisors approved spending $400,000 to buy a document-management system from a company called Questys. The new system was installed in August 2006.

The grand jury reports that within six months, a technician in the Technical Services Department discovered a security flaw in the Questys system that could expose the county's internal network to hackers. That meant official documents could be inappropriately altered by employees or others.

The company reportedly offered to repair the flaw, but county technical staff was never satisfied that the system could work properly. A year after the flaw was discovered, and with the full $400,000 spent, the project was abandoned.

The grand jury report said the chief information officer - Stohlman - made the decision to abandon the project but did not tell the county administrative officer.

The grand jury also looked into whether there was any effort to get a refund, since the system did not work. According to the grand jury, neither county staff nor Questys could provide a copy of a contract for the deal.