A Legislative audit has found that the state misspent millions of dollars on Internet routers.
The report released Sunday to the Joint Committee on Government Organization shows the state spent $24 million in federal stimulus money on 1,164 Cisco routers when smaller, less expensive routers would have done the job.
As a result the state wasted at least $7 million by purchasing the routers with plans to place them in public schools, libraries and State Police barracks. Routers are pieces of equipment that connect computer networks.
The audit blamed the state Office of Technology and the Broadband Technology Opportunity Program Grant Implementation Team, as well as Cisco, for failures on several levels.
The report by the West Virginia Legislative Auditor Performance Evaluation and Research Division reveals:
–The state never surveyed agencies to determine the appropriate router size for their needs.
–The majority of the Cisco routers are far more powerful than the current or future needs of most of the locations and beyond the recommendations of Cisco’s own literature.
–In an example of waste, the Marmet Public Library received a Cisco router than can handle a 150 person office even though the library has just one Internet connection.
–Although the routers were purchased in 2010, only two state police barracks have installed them because they are not configured to work with the state police phone system.
–The state Purchasing Division allowed the Office of Technology to buy the routers without going through a competitive bid process that could have saved millions of dollars.
–The state could have used the stimulus money to expand the fiber network, bringing high speed Internet to more locations, instead of buying over-sized routers.
–The cost of servicing the Cisco routers may end up being greater than the purchase price of appropriately sized routers.
–Cisco sales representatives “showed a wanton indifference to the interests of the public” by selling the state more powerful routers than it needed. It recommends the state consider not doing business with Cisco in the future.
For months, members of the Tomblin Administration have struggled to justify the purchases. Frequently, the explanation has been that the routers will accommodate future computer needs.
However, the audit makes clear that the particular routers purchased are so far beyond the current and future needs that most of the purchases were unnecessary. Additionally, the report says the method by which the state bought the equipment “was not equal, fair or consistent with” state purchasing procedures.
