Connecticut is officially demanding that a Virginia company reimburse the state $6.2 million it spent on a failed upgrade of a major law enforcement database.
In a letter to Maximus Inc., Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said the firm failed to fix some 800 defects in the retooled database system, which state officials have not put into operation for fear it could endanger police and the public.
About 15,000 people, including state and local police officers, the FBI, Secret Service and other federal agencies, use the Connecticut Online Law Enforcement Communications Teleprocessing, or COLLECT, system, to look up everything from motor vehicle information to protective orders.
Blumenthal said the “demand letter,” sent Monday to Maximus is standard operating procedure. Legal action against the company is the next likely step.
“Given the history, the courtroom seems necessary to resolve these issues because Maximus has completely failed to meet its legal and moral obligations,” he said Tuesday.
A call was left seeking comment with a Maximus spokeswoman in Reston, Va.
The state’s Department of Information Technology signed an $8.5 million contract with Maximus in 2003 to overhaul the COLLECT database after taking bids from seven companies. About $6 million has been spent to date because the project is not completed.
Maximus was hired to make the 30-year-old system, more user-friendly. The upgrade was also needed to make the system comply with federal standards, such as how fast information is transmitted.
But testing in September and October 2006 exposed hundreds of defects in the new program and “substantial inferior performance in speed and reliability of queries and search results” compared to the old COLLECT system originally designed by state employees, according to a May 17 letter to Maximus from state officials.
In August, the state gave Maximus an opportunity to fix the system. David M. Casey, chief marketing officer for Maximus, sent a letter to state lawmakers promising the company was “committed to working with our client.”
But Blumenthal said the company failed to address the problems.
“At best, they made a show of seeking to repair it and we gave them more than ample time to make good faith efforts,” he said. “But like the system, it was abject and total failure.”
