City committee declines to recommend Google e-mail contract

Budget and Finance Committee Chairman Bernard C. Parks.
Credit: David Sarno / Los Angeles Times.

The Los Angeles City Council's Budget and Finance Committee agreed Monday evening to abstain from voting on a proposed contract with Google Inc. to replace the city's e-mail system, passing the decision on to the full City Council amid unresolved concerns about the cost and necessity of the contract.

The budget committee, chaired by Councilman Bernard C. Parks, adjourned after nearly two hours of testimony in which the merits of upgrading the current system were hotly debated by an array of city officials, as well as Google, Microsoft Corp, Novell Inc. and consumer advocates.

The full council is tentatively scheduled to vote on the contract Oct. 27.

At the heart of the deliberations is whether the city should go to the expense of replacing its longstanding e-mail system -- considered slow and clunky by many employees -- with a system wholly owned and operated by Google.

The Mountain View, Calif., Web giant would use its own far-flung network of computer servers to store and secure e-mail for many of the city's 30,000 employees.  That would likely include city law enforcement agencies, such as the Los Angeles Police Department, where sensitive data is often exchanged over e-mail.

Though critics of the $7.25-million contract have pointed to security concerns of Google's storing city data in its so-called cloud of servers, the main focus of attention Monday was the extent to which the agreement with Google would deliver budgetary savings to the city.

Indeed, Google's main selling point for its e-mail and document software is that it is a "dramatically lower cost solution," as a Google executive recently described it to The Times.  Officials in the city's Information Technology Agency, which selected Google's bid from among 15 submitted to the city (seven of them were from Microsoft), have also said that the Google system would save the city millions of dollars.

But a recent city analysis found that, instead of offering clear budgetary savings, installing and  running Google Apps would actually exceed the cost of the current Novell system by $1.5 million over the five-year life of the contract. 

"It didn't give me a warm feeling in my stomach that we should jump off this cliff together," Parks said of the disputed savings.  "It looks like we're going on a promise -- and it just doesn't look like, substantively, it's being supported."

Google argues that if the city were to hire the company to handle all of its email, L.A. technology officials could free up many resources now tied to the operation and upkeep of their current system.  Moreover, moving to a next-generation cloud system could offer a variety of other benefits, including the ability to more quickly rebound from a disaster, and stronger security than the city's current offering.

Even so, Parks said with a clear note of skepticism, "the urgency case hasn't been made."

Council members Jose Huizar and Bill Rosendahl agreed to abstain from voting on the contract, saying that more due diligence needed to be performed on the costs and risks involved.

When asked whether he thought the committee's decision to skip voting on the issue was a good or bad sign for the contract, Dave Girouard, the President of Google's Enterprise division, said, "I really don't know -- I've never been in a process like that."

According to the terms of the contract negotiation, the City Council has until Dec. 1 to approve or reject the plan.  If no action is taken by that date, the contract is automatically approved.

-- David Sarno

Comments

[Josh Ooi]

The move to Google should be done. We could save tons of money and be more productive. How can it be more expensive than the current system that takes more then twice the manpower to maintain. The cost of manpower to maintain the current system is enough to justify for the change. We could retrench all these personnel. Their benefits alone could pay for the contract.

SHOW ME HOW DOES THE CURRENT SYSTEM IS CHEAPER THAN $1.5 MILLION WITHIN 5 YEARS!!!!

This is VOODOO MATH.

[GW Guy CA]

A question for Voodoo Math - Have you ever managed a GroupWise system? It simply works, requires little or no maintenance and is rock solid. Novell has world class support and experience behind them. Furthermore, their system is not slow and clunky.

[David Prinzing]

I would consider this a really simple decision: Go Google! The total cost of maintaining a mail system in-house is much higher, and includes more than just the mail system software license/maintenance costs: (1) power & cooling; (2) server hardware; (3) operating system licenses; (4) storage system; (5) back-up system, with off-site storage; (6) mail server anti-virus (w/per-user fees); (7) anti-spam server (with all the above); and (8) labor. The existing system probably has a mailbox capacity limit (maybe 250 MB?) where Google offers 25,000 MB/user.

Also, the Google Apps package includes an instant-messaging system, Calendars, Contacts, Documents, Videos, and Sites, which can replace Microsoft Sharepoint. It's a very compelling offering.

Outsourcing a commodity service like messaging is an easy decision. The only reason I can see for the delay is political -- opposition from people who have an interest in the status quo is probably strong.

[James Smith]

This email fiasco in LA is funny (to me) on so many levels.

First, I am surprised that govt is thinking about saving money (minuscule) by putting so much energy and time on some mundane thing. Govt's IT budget in CA is huge, and LA city consumes a substantial amount of that IT budget. Ton of money is wasted on really large system contracts (which run in multi-millions) given to large system integrators, and the politicians are trying to justify their existence by showing the citizens that the city govt cares about saving money on a email system. Citizen taxpayers are wasted on so many large systems, and all they are doing is playing games with the taxes of citizens.

Second, it is funny that govt doesn't even realize that they will be getting rid of their employees (Infrastructure, Operations) by going with Google's email system (which is ugly and looks like 15th century email system). It will start with email first, and then the city may tell other folks (managing application infrastructure) that they are not not needed. Instead of complaining, city officials can provide better training and resources to let them do their job.

Third, govt officials are forcing decisions down the employees throats . Decision won't be made on the merits of the technology, but govt officials will make the decision on which firm is in their backyard. Trips by the Google CEO (and other management folks) in LA is all about showing the power of money, and that will be deciding factor. LA City Mayor and city officials will bow to the power and money of Google.

All this should give us more reasons to trust our politicians and the city officials. Really funny to me.

[Ronnie S.]

The last two lines were interesting.
"According to the terms of the contract negotiation, the City Council has until Dec. 1 to approve or reject the plan. If no action is taken by that date, the contract is automatically approved"

I am seeing this behaviour pretty common in some cities and counties. City/county govt work out a secret contract with the vendor (city officials that may benefit personally) in such a way that citizen's (or employees) opinion is of no-value. They put a short timeline, and the contract is always worded to favor one vendor (in this case Google). Awesome. Love it. Google is benefitting quite a bit in govt.

[Unsafe]

Google, Yahoo, etc. are 100% hackable and unsafe for storing private documents. Do the research, you will find all of them have been breached and are breached on a regular basis.

If you were a witness to a homicide, the suspect was a gang member, and your name was in an email or LAPD report would you want it stored at google?

Saving money does not always equal a good idea.

[Sunny]

So, LA is okay with emails being out for hours and when there is no explanation? Okay with internet hacks?
It is okay with all the CA public confidential information being handled by Google?

When will this over-privatization stop in this country? I am not against clouyd computing but unless there is a set standard for cloud computing and is proven to be safe by the US Military, who by the way, did invent the internet, I dont think any government/city data should reside outside their networks. Not the say that hackers cannot be internal employees but the chances of that is pretty slim compared to unreliable http email systems.

[no contract cellphones]

it had been predicted and traceable for almost zero percent failure scenario. but still, hackers always find a way in a security hole.

i really dont get it when people say it's 100% safe. there's no 100% safety, as long there's security there'll be intrusion. just nature's way.