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Nycaps and Citytime

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NYCAPS and CityTime: A Tale of Two New York City

1. How important were the NYCAPS and CityTime projects for New York City? What were their objectives? What would have been their business benefits?

New York City Automated Payroll System (NYCAPS) and CityTime were both projects initiated by Mayor Bloomberg, to modernize the New York City government through a technological overhaul of various systems. Both systems had a common goal of saving the government money by creating systems that were more efficient and effective. The goal of NYCAPS was to create a modern, automated system for managing and updating personnel information for New York City’s workforce, including employee benefits information. NYCAPS would replace the need for the eight city wide systems and 200 systems within individual agencies and the maze of paper work related to employee benefits and job changes. The goal for CityTime was to create an automated payroll timekeeping process to curb undeserved overtime payments to city workers and improve accountability throughout the government. The CityTime system would reduce errors associated with manual timekeeping such as police and firefighters and other aging city workers receiving unnecessary overtime at the end of their careers to increase their pension and prevent lawsuits brought against the city by workers who claimed to be paid too little for the hours they worked.

4. What were the similarities and differences in the management of both projects?

There are many similarities between the two projects which led to their failure: * No research was done to see if there was commercial software that could provide the same functionality that was needed to make both systems efficient. * Both projects were delegated to outside agencies, NYCAPS was delegated to Acenture while CityTime was delegated to Science Applications International (SAICS) * Contractors were billed hourly instead of a flat rate which allowed costs for the projects to balloon without either company having anything to show for it. * Projects were both overseen by government administrators who were unqualified in project management. * No checks were put in place to ensure the projects would be completed in a timely manner and budget was unregulated.
There are very few differences between the two projects in this case: * NYCAPS project monitors informed the administration of chronic mismanagement, cost overruns and waste in the project but it was ignored. In the CityTime project costs were ignored as they believed the software could be sold to another government. * SAIC delegated the work on the CityTime project to subcontractors which made the City not liable for all the waste incurred by SAIC, Accenture blamed the city for changing the scope and functionality of the project. * The New York government was able to get SAIC to agree to repay $500 million in restitution and penalties, Accenture only agreed to move to fixed price billing * NYCAPS was built to run on the legacy systems even though one of the main reasons for the development of the NYCAPS system was to overhaul the old system.

5. What was the business impact of these botched implementations? Explain your answer.

The business impact of these botched implementations cost the city time and money. The NYCAPS project cost the city $363 million and approximately 10 years while the CityTime cost the city $720 million and approximately 14 years. The city’s proposal for both projects was intended to save millions in paperwork, time and maintenance of various incompatible IS. None of the systems were ever completed and the time and money invested was lost.

6. Describe the steps that should have been taken to prevent negative outcomes in these projects.
The negative outcomes in these projects could have been avoided by implementing the steps below: * Review of existing commercial software available on the market to see if it meets the requirements and functionality required by the city. * Employment of a qualified project management specialist or technological expert to manage the projects. * The city should bill contractors as functional benchmarks for projects are achieved instead of hourly. * Establish a set of audit guidelines for the project budget and progress of the project to ensure that the budget is in line with the amount of work being performed.

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