City officials attribute much of the additional costs to added features and portray the project as “exceedingly successful,” allowing employees to be more efficient. But thousands of internal emails obtained by the News-Press through a public records request paint a different story — one of a project that has been riddled with delays and rising costs.
“I share your frustration…” EdgeSoft founder Shan Sundar wrote to Information Services Director Ed Fraga in July 2009. “To put it into some context, this is definitely a $2.5 million project, no matter who did it. We learned this the hard way.”
EdgeSoft representatives could not be reached for comment.
Fraga, who joined the department one month earlier, was charged with reigning in the then two-year-old project.
City officials had recommended buying the new interface to replace what they said was an outdated system that was unable to support remote Internet access and other important functions.
About 300 employees in the city's community development and fire departments use the system for all planning and building and safety permitting, code enforcement and annual fire safety inspections of local businesses.
City officials have spent thousands of hours on the change over, the emails show. In one month alone, five Information Services employees worked more than 300 hours on implementing the software at the Building & Safety division.
The bulk of the project was originally scheduled to last roughly two years — with the planning, code enforcement and building and safety components to be fully functional by January 2009.
