$100 million price tag for Fulton IT, facility upgrades

For months Fulton County officials have promised to improve services and cut costs in a government long derided as inefficient and unresponsive.

But as the county starts to prepare its 2016 budget, the cost of transformation is becoming apparent, and it’s not cheap. Fulton officials may spend $100 million over the next three years to fix run-down public facilities and upgrade information technology.

Paying for those improvements could involve trade-offs for taxpayers. Already Fulton officials are considering cuts to programs and personnel, as well as reductions in grants for nonprofits and Grady Memorial Hospital. The details won’t be known until the county unveils its proposed 2016 budget later this year.

Fulton officials say the end result will be improved operations and – in the long run – cost savings. It also will mean county residents will be able to access a variety of county services - from concert tickets to business licenses - via their smart phone.

“It’s all justifiable. It’s needed,” said County Commission Chairman John Eaves. “It will allow us to provide better service to our constituents.”

But some aspects of the plan are coming under scrutiny. Former Fulton Information Technology Director Maurice Ficklin, who says he was fired last year because he blew the whistle on dubious contracts, thinks the county can upgrade technology while saving tens of millions of dollars, not spending it.

“As a technology executive with over 34 years of technology experience, I submit there are many questions that should be asked for the sake of saving taxpayers’ money and not continuing the use of the same business model that I exposed last year,” Ficklin told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The cost of upgrading facilities and information technology is starting to trickle out after months of study.

A new report by management consultant Accenture LLP recommends Fulton County spend $22.6 million over the next three years to upgrade information technology – everything from wireless networks to employee e-mail to consumer technology that would allow residents to access county services via smart phones and other devices. The county should spend another $6.8 million annually on IT operations, the consultant said, bringing the total three-year cost to around $43 million.

» LEARN MORE: See the Fulton County IT Assessment and Roadmap report here

The county also is preparing to employ a consultant to review the maintenance needs of county buildings and other facilities that have been neglected for years. Though the specific cost won't be known until a study is completed, County Manager Dick Anderson expects it to cost $50 million to $60 million over the next few years.

Anderson said the cost of the initiatives is a fraction of the roughly $1 billion the county spends each year. He said it’s a smart investment that will give managers information they need to change the organization, including metrics for success.

“It is the essence of the transformation,” he said. “None of that can really work effectively without a robust infrastructure.”

Eaves also said the investment makes sense. He told his colleagues in a meeting Wednesday he wants Fulton to be recognized as the best county government in the Southeast.

That’s a far cry from the county’s reputation.

Critics – especially north Fulton Republicans – have long complained the county is bloated and inefficient. A redistricting plan approved by the General Assembly gave Republicans a greater voice on the County Commission that took office in January, and commissioners have vowed to trim costs while protecting popular services.

One of their first moves was hiring Anderson, a former BellSouth executive with experience taming big bureaucracies. He sought the IT and facilities studies as part of a larger effort to deliver on those pledges of better government.

But “better” apparently does not mean “cheap.” Anderson hopes to cover much of the new costs by dipping into reserve funds. But some money will come out of county operations.

Though he won’t propose a specific 2016 budget until later this year, Anderson has directed department heads to trim personnel costs by 2 percent, program costs by 5 to 10 percent and grants to various outside groups by up to 20 percent.

“That probably is not where we end up,” Anderson told commissioners Wednesday. “But it’s where we start from.”

Ficklin questioned the county's plans to upgrade information technology. He filed a lawsuit that says he was fired last year for exposing IT contracting abuses that were later confirmed by an internal audit. He said his plans to revamp the department would have saved $30 million over 10 years and cost the county nothing.

Anderson said Ficklin’s plan sounds unrealistic. He said the consultant’s recommendations go far beyond fixing the contracting issues raised in the audit.