{
  "id": "1994-october-covering-the-computer-beat",
  "slug": "1994-october-covering-the-computer-beat",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1994-october-covering-the-computer-beat.html",
  "year": 1994,
  "month": "October",
  "monthNum": 10,
  "headline": "Covering the computer beat",
  "kicker": "The medium is the message",
  "author_name": "David Bloom",
  "author_title": "",
  "affiliation": "The Los Angeles Daily News",
  "summary": "Journalists should investigate how government agencies and businesses purchase, implement, and manage computer systems, as decision-makers often lack technical expertise and may waste millions on poor choices.",
  "keywords": [
    "computers",
    "investigation",
    "contracts"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Investigative Methods",
    "Technology",
    "Business & Economy"
  ],
  "technologies": [
    "mainframe"
  ],
  "full_text": "IRE, Journal and Uplink have run a lot of stories in recent years about using computers to improve your journalism, analyzing reams of data, finding trends, and pinpointing problems with computer-assisted techniques.\n\nWe don't often think to write about computers themselves, about the ways they are bought, improved, maintained, developed, used and misused by government agencies, business and others.\n\nBut we don't often think to write about computers themselves, about the ways they are bought, improved, maintained, developed, used and misused by government agencies, business and others.\n\nIt's a fertile field for good investigative pieces, for one simple reason: A lot of times the top decision makers who must pick computer systems aren't particularly good at it, often because they aren't any more comfortable with the arcana of computer systems than any other non-specialist.\n\nJust about any business, including (and sometimes especially) government, has top managers who don't know much about computers but now are making important decisions that may cost millions of dollars and cause uncounted problems if they are wrong.\n\nLuckily, if you've been trying to learn more about computer-assisted reporting, you've probably learned enough of the big-picture details about computing to at least understand what the experts are talking about on these stories. But even if you don't have that background, here are some ideas to get you going.\n\nThe Basics\n\nMany of these are basic story approaches that any veteran government reporter will recognize, only with a high-tech spin that often means they've been neglected both within the government agency and without.\n\nLook for the usual sources of dispassionate information, the kind of stuff The Reporter's Handbook by IRE talks about, such as audits, contracts, trade press reports, and professors of computer science or management information science and other specialists. Usually there are reports trying to explain what went wrong to governing bodies and investigative agencies such as grand juries. (This depends upon the state. California grand juries issue an annual watchdog report on government operations that often has useful information on these things).\n\nThere are also the somewhat less dispassionate sources, such as insiders and former insiders at the agency's data processing operations and competitors' lobbyists and marketing representatives (who are always willing to dish dirt on what's going bad).\n\nLooking to buy a big box\n\nHow are contracts structured and awarded? More than with most contracts for tangible goods, a craftily written computer hardware, software or services contract can be set up to nearly guarantee one company will win a lucrative bid. Why? Well, take one common situation: the county welfare agency needs a new software program to automate the form-bedeviled eligibility determination process. But say the welfare agency already is using an aging IBM mainframe. Because the agency already has IBM, the contract could specify only a program that runs with that company's mainframe and the operating system it is using. While this seems rational enough, does it mean the welfare agency is locking itself into an old technology and approach that ultimately will be more expensive and less effective? Specifying one computer and one kind of operating system for it generally means a lot of other companies that could provide workable alternatives for less cost are being shut out of the process from the beginning. The state of California, currently trying to develop a new welfare computer system, has trashed one of two approaches after spending millions on it. It is choosing to go with the other system, though it uses quite dated technology and is already behind schedule.\n\nContract Wars\n\nLook at the lobbying wars for computer contracts. What are companies doing to influence the writing of these requests?\n\nIn poking around Los Angeles County government, I noticed in lobbying reports that the computer companies were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on all kinds of county officials. Those reports detailed how IBM, EDS, Unisys, Lockheed Information Management Systems and other big data companies were jockeying for millions of dollars in contracts of all kinds.\n\nThe companies didn't even focus their efforts on department heads and elected officials, though those top decision makers weren't ignored. Instead, the companies were targeting the mid-level bureaucrats who typically have to work with such systems and often are charged with the grunt work of acquiring new systems.\n\nNot everyone has such lobbying reports to tap for information. But maybe the agency requires officials to file campaign contribution reports, or annual conflict-of-interest reports, or gift reports that a reporter can look at.\n\nOne of the things I do is keep copies of all the county's contracts when they're approved. That's a great place to look when you're trying to figure out what is at stake for these companies. Follow these contracts over a few years and you'll find some interesting patterns of renewals and expanded payments.\n\nLook outward, angels\n\nMany governments are now looking at \"outsourcing\" their data processing operations, contracting virtually everything with one big provider, like EDS or Lockheed. Outsourcing is a hot trend in both the private and public sectors, but one laden with land mines. If your government agency is considering doing it, watch it closely, and watch who gets the contract.\n\nThese outsourcing contracts are notorious for their problems, particularly when the agency has unanticipated new computer demands. At this point, they often are vulnerable to exorbitant charges from their new \"partner.\" Having jettisoned their in-house specialists, the agency often has little choice but to go along, at a premium price.\n\nOutsourcing also raises issues of data integrity and security that just aren't present in the private sector.\n\nFor instance, while it's darned problematic for some private company if its financial system gets scrambled, it's not a community-wide data disaster like having birth certificate information, criminal or judicial information or property records fouled up, tampered with or destroyed. How secure is this information?\n\nThe Long Run\n\nLook at the maintenance contracts for these systems. Often they are more lucrative than the original purchase, and get less oversight. These contracts can run into the millions of dollars, yet are often routinely, even automatically awarded to the same vendor year after year without bids or contract reviews.\n\nLook at what decisions are being made about technology. Mainframes are no longer the sole answer and often are the worst one. Distributed systems, such as networks of PCs or work stations, sometimes connected to mini computers, often are cheaper, more flexible and can have new programs developed in substantially less time. Again, are government agencies making the best decisions, or even considering all the options?\n\nThe Diaspora\n\nAs systems have decentralized, so has the oversight. This trend drives central data processing operations bonkers. It also has implications for the agency in terms of controlling its spending, making sure systems are compatible and making sure they all can talk together.\n\nLos Angeles County, the nation's largest, spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on computer-related expenses, but it can't tell you how many hundreds of millions of dollars a year. That's virtually a story in itself.\n\nA rule of thumb on computer-related costs is percent of sales in the private sector, 3 percent of expenditures in the public. That indicates a lot of money, but if they aren't spending in that ballpark, are they too slow in automating?\n\nThe county is now doing a study to find out what it's spending on computers; so far they know they have more than 700 different computer systems. Ask your agency what they spend. They probably can't tell you.\n\nBy the way, if they have done such a study, get it. It's a good resource for computer-assisted reporting projects. You'll have some idea of the databases the agency tracks, and who's in charge of them.\n\nCheck the priesthood\n\nYou should also look at what's happened to the agency's information services or data processing department. Frequently, it gets left behind, as other departments decide they can do without mainframes and the high internal charges the DP guys bill them for their services. But they are the organization's internal experts. Are they effective and underutilized, or are they out-of-touch dinosaurs wedded to old technology?\n\nIt's all timing. And money.\n\nWhen it comes to developing a new computerized system, you can almost guarantee any large project will come in late and over budget. An expert I interviewed routinely doubled all estimates of delivery time and price to get a realistic view of a project's development schedule.\n\nPart two will appear next month.",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6",
    "extracted_at": "2026-07-05",
    "verified": true
  },
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