January 27, 2010 12:20 AM UTC

Better, faster, at lower cost - saving the state money

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• by: DavidThi808

Now here’s an idea the Colorado State government should consider. It delivers needed technology sooner, provides a better product, and does so at 1/10 the cost. And in our present budget crunch, that 90% savings is tens to hundreds of millions of dollars that can be used elsewhere.

What’s not to like?

from techcrunch / Vivek Wadhwa

I called on Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to rescue the California government-to help rebuild its legacy systems. I also went out on a limb and “bet” that an unemployment check-processing system that California State had budgeted $50 million to upgrade could be rebuilt from scratch for a tenth of the cost, in a fraction of the time.

Ok, just some random post by yet another techie – no? Well actually…

two entrepreneurs agreed to step up to the challenge. Jeff Whitehead, CEO of Real Time Matrix … He has a reputation for delivering more than he promises. So I take his words very seriously.

Another entrepreneur who agreed to take the challenge is Scott Broomfield, CEO of Veeple… he and his CTO, Craig Sproule, too have a solid track record of building large-scale enterprise systems.

Now granted, this would mean not writing large checks to giant multi-national technology companies who have teams of nicely dressed salespeople who win and dine and ??? the staff at OIT. And it would probably mean doing business with tech companies located here in Colorado which the state has no experience with.

But otherwise, what’s not to like?

So I put it to the legislature (where there is strong bipartisan consensus that OIT is a giant fiscal sinkhole) – here’s a place where you can deliver more sooner, reduce the budget deficit with no pain, and bring jobs to this state.

ps – It is highly unlikely my company would bid on any of these projects.