State computers need upgrade - With better citizen services in mind, Pawlenty seeks $213 million

When Alexandria Technical College student Scott Formo tells professors "The computer ate my homework," they believe him.

They know Minnesota's colleges and universities suffer from slow, outdated and unresponsive computers.

"Sometimes you will sit there for 10 minutes and absolutely nothing will happen with the computer," said Formo, the president of the Minnesota State College Student Association, who lives in Glenwood. He's gotten failing grades on assignments -- later fixed -- because assignments he handed in electronically never got to his professors. "It gets frustrating at times."

Gov. Tim Pawlenty announced last week he wants to give Minnesota State Colleges and Universities $60 million over the next two years to make sure such problems don't happen anymore.

The money is the biggest chunk of a $213 million investment Pawlenty wants to make in technology improvements in state agencies and elsewhere in 2008 and 2009.

The rest of the $213 million proposal, which is up for legislators' consideration, would be spread widely.

Much of it will go to fund the computer infrastructure that makes state government run. That, even its backers attest, is not the kind of thing that lawmakers can crow about when they return to their constituents.

"It's not very sexy stuff but, in the end, probably ties into other stuff that looks very important," said Stephanie Andrews, an executive budget coordinator for state government in the state's finance agency.

That includes $17 million to create a comprehensive computer security system for state government, the lack of which has made some state computers vulnerable to outsiders peeking in.

"This makes sure that if you are going to do anything online, you are going to be able to do it securely," Andrews said.

Right now, each state agency "must address the onslaught of security challengers on its own" and "Ineffective security measures at one agency expose the entire state network to risk," according to the governor's budget request, which would pay for the system for 2008 and 2009.

The new system, which would cost $17 million over 2010 and 2011 as well, would buy the state weekly scans of every critical government computer system, set new standards for state computer security and put in place other safety measures.

The governor also wants an influx of $15 million to help the state develop a new electronic licensing system that could become a "one-stop shop" for all state licenses.

That's something Minnesotans want, according to a 2004 state survey. About 85 percent of citizens in the survey said they wanted to renew their state licenses online. But, that same year, only 18 percent of Minnesotans were able to actually renew their licenses online.

The task is a hefty one. There are 600 types of state licenses, from driver's permits to acupuncture licenses to hazardous-materials credentials.

The $15 million would help the state develop an online licensing system for five agencies, create a funding proposal to bring the rest of the state agencies along and figure out how much it would cost to run the new licensing site.

The governor also proposed:

--Creating a new tax system in the Department of Revenue. That would cost $16 million in the next two years and $12 million each two-year period after that and would update the agency's computer systems.

--Buying and implementing a Web-based system so that the state could track and manage its property. Right now, 22 agencies own property and each has a property-information-management system, including 10 unconnected systems and some paper spreadsheets. That would cost $6.6 million in the next two years to set up and about $1 million annually to run after that.

--Spending $11 million to coordinate information technology across state departments.

Some of those projects might run into problems, beyond getting lawmakers to approve the funding.

"Right now, the executive branch runs a fairly 'siloed' environment," said Department of Labor and Industry Commissioner Scott Brener. He has worked on various state technology projects for years and was in Gov. Arne Carlson's Office of Technology.

That means, essentially, each government department works quasi-independently on technology projects, without necessarily sharing information -- or computer systems -- with the others.

"It isn't just money. It's getting agencies to cooperate with each other," said former Sen. Steve Kelley, a Democrat from Hopkins, who focused on technology while in the Legislature.

That's one of the reasons Minnesota has fallen behind when it comes to tech services.

A decade ago, the state ranked near the top nationally in the move online, but by 2005 it had dropped to 34th place as other states adapted more quickly. Investments over the past year or so have popped it back to 14th place, according to a Brown University-based assessment.

"In general, Minnesota has not had a coordinated technology investment in a number of years," said Steven Clift, an online strategist who helped develop Minnesota's first Web portal more than a decade ago.

That's meant some outdated systems are handling state business. Some of the Revenue Department's computer technology has been in place since 1968, for instance.

MnSCU is also dealing with aging systems at a time when more students want to do business and take classes online, said Ken Niemi, its vice chancellor for information technology.

If lawmakers approve the $60 million request, MnSCU could fundamentally retool all of its computer works and replace the 15-year-old computer operations that run the 32 colleges and universities' student records and finance system, he said.

Some of those systems are so old that the companies they came from have said they'll stop servicing them in the next few years.

"We have to plan now so we don't get cut," Niemi said. If that happened, "we'd be out of business, basically."

Rachel E. Stassen-Berger can be reached at rstassen-berger@pioneerpress.com.

$213 MILLION BUYS ...

The governor has proposed spending $213 million on state computers. Some ways it might affect you:

--$15 million for a pilot program to allow Minne-sotans to get state licenses online. If that works, the long-range goal is putting all 600 licenses granted by the state online.

--$17 million to make the state's system more secure from hackers and viruses.

--$60 million to improve the MnSCU system for students and teachers, including on-line classes, grade reporting.