AUSTIN (KXAN) — The Metropolis of Austin doesn’t know how substantially it spends on know-how every single calendar year and doesn’t retain a citywide stock of the know-how it owns. These are just a couple of the results in a new town auditor’s report.
The audit, introduced to several city council users this 7 days, notes there are several problems with the city’s course of action to buy technological know-how.
Planning for purchases is mainly left to personal departments and not carried out continuously or coordinated, according to the audit. The city’s process to obtain technology typically involves many events, like city council, the Communications & Technologies Management Section, the Company Obtaining Office environment and other metropolis departments.
Auditors seemed at the city’s know-how buying procedure amongst 2019 and 2021. They paint a photograph of a dysfunctional system which lacks interaction or knowledge of what the town already owns.
“Imagine you are dwelling in a residence with four other roommates who do not talk much. Every of you goes to the grocery shop and buys foodstuff, but none of you has a checklist or understands what is in the pantry in advance of you go,” auditors wrote metaphorically. “When every person gets household, how substantially foodstuff did you buy that was now in the residence? How a lot of of you bought the similar issue? This is like how the City buys engineering besides the City’s approach is on a much larger sized scale.”
The audit thorough examples of city departments purchasing technological innovation that does not fulfill or align with the city’s needs.
In one occasion, a section spent $36,000 on tablets for staff members to use in the subject. After getting the tablets, the office uncovered they would not function with the department’s software, and the division shelved them, in accordance to the audit.
The audit references another example the place a section desired to obtain a way to monitor its inventory and the city’s Communications