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You expect waste from county government. You expect a lack of technological knowledge and expertise in the IT department of a county government. But the IT department for Cuyahoga County, according to a PD article, is almost unbelievably wasteful and awful and inept after years of colossally misguided decisions and leadership.

Daniel Weaver, the former IT head, allegedly bought his job from Frank Russo for $10,000. As County Exec Ed FitzGerald told the paper, “Not only were they corrupt, but they also weren’t very good at what they did because they didn’t have an IT background.” Yes, your 6-year-old niece probably had as much qualification in setting up complex networks as they did.

New Chief Information Officer Jeff Mowry has, by all accounts, the expertise and talent to remedy the mess, but the mess left by his predecessors isn’t small. It’s more like the rotting debris of four decades of hording by some fat old lady featured on a hording TV show where they find 41 dead cats under her sofa and rotting food in her bed.

Some of the stunning bullet points from the article:

This article appears in Jul 13-19, 2011.

Vince Grzegorek has been with Scene since 2007 and editor-in-chief since 2012. He previously worked at Discount Drug Mart and Texas Roadhouse.

4 replies on “Cuyahoga County IT Department is a Mess”

  1. I work in the real estate industry and have had to use the computer systems in the treasurer, auditor, recorder, and board of revision offices. I can tell you, as much issues as we have with the county, the computer systems (from perspective of use and getting work done) was/is better then any county in the state. This includes Franklin county (Columbus Ohio)
    For all it’s faults, we have amazing employees and tools in our county. I will not argue that there is not a glut, or that any of that information above is incorrect, but from an end users perspective, it worked seemlessly

    I thought we could at least get some unbiased reporting from somewhere. Everyone knows the PD is crap.

  2. Well any New IT professional, needs to be thinking about Cost vs. Benefits…. Keeping networks and systems alive is not enough anymore… A good Professional in any department should be on the look out too save money. The Article at Plain Dealer is pretty good. A lot more details.

  3. I wasn’t an it person I was the guy that had to fix it all from printers to pc with to many types of pc and printers to fix it takes more tec to take care of them. the best is one type of brand of pc + one brand of printer on the network.

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