Big sister is watching

Email to Rumblings (5/26/08 2:58 PM):

"We have been accessing Rumblings from our City computers and just last week they implemented a program that forced each user to sign on to it with our employee number and Novell password, one manager told us that it was to measure bandwidth usage and to use the Internet as usual but with discretion. Interesting...."Work Will Make You Free".

Rumblings had heard that an employee Internet usage program was being implemented, under the guise of "bandwidth monitoring", but had no confirmation until Mondays e-mail.

ITA management is rolling out their "snooping", floor by floor, segment by segment. However, don't expect a "team" Randi-gram e-mail before it rolls into your section.
_______________________________________
Anonymous said...This doesn't seem to be implemented yet on the 14th floor, though some other technical difficulties today suggested some trouble with domain name services (DNS). May 27, 2008 8:17 PM
Anonymous said...What this means, if you are at a workstation and use the browser, shut the browser down when you leave or whoever comes along next will be surfing on your dime. The sites that they visit will be credited to you. May 30, 2008 5:48 PM
Anonymous said...It's unfortunate that ITA staff wont get a chance to scream their concerns at Randi, like they did with the CityFone mug shot lunacy. Lack of transparency on this subject makes you have to wonder about the real agenda here. Word is, most ITA managers have not even been clued in. May 31, 2008 5:26 PM

“Fool On the Hill”

Email to Rumblings - 5/28/08 - 2:52 PM:

The lyrics to McCartney’s “Fool On the Hill” have played inside my head since I began reading this blog a few months back, Yet at the same time I wondered if all the negativity directed at our General Manager was actually fair.

After the events of the last hour, I now know that the lyrics aptly describe both the current disposition and wounded reputation of this GM as she continues to follow the instructions placed before her, "open mouth, insert foot".

Randi's cast of enablers are making her appear like an insipid knucklehead. Foolish and simultaneously Machiavellian. For all the speculation over the last year, that the former AGM/XO Ken Simmons was in charge of the on-going duplicity in ITA, todays CityFone fiasco clearly proves that the ITA's bumbling management style is defined by it's leader.

I leave the rest to McCartney and poetic licence:

Day after day, alone on the hill

The gal with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still

But nobody wants to know her

They can see that she's just a fool

As she never gives an answer

But the fool on the hill

Sees the sun going down

And the eyes in her head

See the world spinning around

Well on the way, head in a cloud

The lady of a thousand voices talking perfectly loud

But nobody ever hears her

Or the sound she appears to make

And she never seems to notice

But the fool on the hill

Sees the sun going down

And the eyes in her head

See the world spinning around

And nobody seems to like her

They can tell what she wants to do

And she never shows her feelings

But the fool on the hill

Sees the sun going down

And the eyes in her head

See the world spinning around

She never listens to them

She knows that they're the fools

They don't like her

The fool on the hill

Sees the sun going down

And the eyes in her head

See the world spinning around

______________________________

Anonymous said... Seems to me that Randi, and to some extent, the entire executive team, are "post turtles."Not being a California term, you might wonder what a 'post turtle' is. When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a "post turtle." You know she didn't get up there by herself, she doesn't belong up there, she doesn't know what to do while she is up there, and you just wonder what kind of a dumb ass put her up there to begin with? June 1, 2008 8:42 AM Answer: Tony Villar

Bits 'o dirt washed up on shore

E-mail to Rumblings:

Avast!

We have it on VERY good authority that the Rumblings blog is checked DAILY by management or the minions in the land of the Great Timekeeper! If you wondered why access to Rumblings from city computers hasn't been blocked, that might be the reason. It would only be courteous to give our shipmates in management who are such loyal readers a fine rumbling welcome!

Other rumor is that management REALLY REALLY wants to find out who the author(s) is (are). Some of those who have been accused of being the author or of even knowing who the author is are NOT! Despite the departure of Ken Simmons people still seem to be very afraid.

And for those worried about furloughs, notice that the CAO herself does NOT count mandatory furloughs of EAA represented employees as any kind of done deal. EAA is NOT part of the Coalition of City Unions and has no such negotiations. The only reopener negotiations with EAA concern PARITY with DWP and an unfair employee relations practice has been filed with the Employee Relations Board against the CAO for failing to bargain in good faith. A hearing has been scheduled for that UERP.

The memo below was found here:
http://www.lacity.org/cao/budgetmemos.htm

Memo No. 137
CITY OF LOS ANGELES
INTER-DEPARTMENTAL CORRESPONDENCE
Date: May 6,2008
To: Budget and Finance Committee
From: Karen L. Sisson, City Administrative Officer
Subject: FURLOUGH DAYS FOR PLANNING DEPARTMENT

The Committee requested information on the feasibility of developers paying the cost of furlough days for Planning Department staff responsible for the generation of decision letters.

The final decision to include or exclude furlough days as a budqet balancing mechanism is within the purview of the City Council. This also extends to the determination of which functions, departments and classifications are required to participate in the furlough program. Removing the Planning Department staff from the furlough program would require that additional savings be generated in other parts ofthe budget.

The impact of the furlough program must also be negotiated with the affected unions. Preliminary discussion of furloughs has taken place with the Coalition of City Unions, but has not taken place with the Engineers and Architects Association that represents the majority of the Planning Department staff (a majority of ITA as well). The outcome of those negotiations cannot be identified at this time.

The ability to assess the developer an additional fee to eliminate the necessity for furlough days is dependent on the level of cost recovery currently being provided by the fee. If the fee is at full cost recovery, the fee cannot be increased for this purpose.

KLS:TAC
Question 307

Channel 36 being censored?

Leslie Dutton, Full Disclosure writes:

Full Disclosure on L.A. Channel 36, was not shown tonight during our regular time slot, without any notice or explanation.

We sent out thousands of Emails, as we usually do, notifying people of the programs that would be airing tonight. This was the first time that we promoted the fact that LA 36 Channel is streaming the program live from www.la36.org during that time slot of 8-9 p.m. I wonder what people thought about the LA 36 channel when Full Disclosure was not there and instead they are listening to a discussion from Cal State Dominguez Hills on "Deviates" in society.

You would think there would be some notice. Will our programs be shown Monday from 4-5 p.m. as the Channel schedule promises.? Is this a glimpse of things to come?
____________________________________________
What was suppose to be shown:

The Full Disclosure Network presents a Video News Blog Special Series covering Foreign Student Visa Loopholes, School Bonds and the Audits and Investigations of the LAUSD, to be featured the on Cable TV as follows:

L. A . Cable Channel 36
or Live video stream www.la36.org
on Sunday May 11th 8-9 pm.
Monday May 12th 4-5 p.m.

Terrorist Visa Loopholes? - Covering the crossroads battle over immigration and how the powerful education lobby influences U. S. Immigration Policy and student visa policies.

Secret School Bonds Create Billions Public Debt - LAUSD School Bonds issued without voter approval approach a billion dollars in outstanding debt.

IRS Relents to School District Clout - IRS waives penalty and sanctions for school district’s illegal use of non-voter approved bonds.

Prosecutor Attacks FDN on School Bond Cover-up Blog. - The truth is revealed from all perspectives on the questionable financing on Belmont.

Auditors & Investigators Speak Out on Lack of Prosecution - for big dollar crimes in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
____________________________________________
Are the ITA and the Mayor censoring this LA schools investigation/blog?
____________________________________________
E-mail from Full Disclosure:

Rumblings:

Can you tell me how LA36 video streams their shows? Last night the wrong show was video streamed (in place of ours) on their website where they have live streaming. Is the video streaming a separate function or does TIME WARNER (play back out of Santa Monica) do control that too?

Reason I ask: I got a message from GM at LA36 saying the City got wind of Rumblings intent to send an Email to protest what happened to us. Then they sent me an Email saying that it was Time Warner who had a problem software and that our show is "back on track" to run this afternoon. My question is could both the cable and the Internet software go bad at the same time, by accident?

So just the hint that Rumblings was going to take action, panicked the City. GOOD JOB!
Leslie

If someone knows the answer to Leslie's question please let Rumblings know and we will forward the info.

Mandatory furlough/Early retirement

Email to Rumblings:

There are many rumors and much anxiety about "mandatory furloughs" and early retirement"packages". The few facts suggest a highly politicized process.

Neither of the above is a done deal. The budget process for the past month has been fraught with the press releases of the week, usually on Fridays, just in time to stir people up before the weekend. One of the first examples was the announcement that 767 positions must be cut.

At the Civil Service Commission, representatives from EAA and from the Coalition of City Unions (SEIU, AFSCME, and four others) appeared in opposition to the rule change. The 21 day notice motion FAILED 2-2. If this rule change were reintroduced, it starts over again with another 21 day notice.

Also, consider the source of the press release about early retirement. It was read by Cheryl Parisi, who is on the staff of AFSCME. What she released might be a suggestion from the Coalition of Unions to the Villaraigosa administration,but it is NOT a statement by City management that there will be early retirement incentives.

The last time a so-called package was offered, the ITA employees who were targeted were ISMs and DBAs. They received individual letters and could accept or reject the offer. (It was not a case in which anyone who wanted to could go sign up to get service credit and leave.) This was around 1994.

There was a recent council motion requesting that the retirement with 30 years of service and 50 years of age be "studied". The study has not yet been finished, so 30/50 is not a done deal either.

Consider the possibility that the whole series of these announcements, agenda items, requests to verify your personnel record, pressure to take voluntary furlough days, and so on, may be intended to scare employees in order to gain concessions and to convince taxpayers that the budget is being cut.

"Merger and Acquisition"

Email to Rumblings:

A couple of PDFs (see docs in comments), one a set of minutes and one a"presentation", found on the Information Technology Policy Committee intranet web page, downloaded & attached for your reading pleasure.

Seems to me that the comments from Randi, Mayor's staff et. al. found herein suggest that the 'CTO Prerogative' would be a possibility. Certainly the department managements whose IT staff are subject to being absorbed have reason to be skeptical about this. They know of the previous "re-alignment" and some of their applications lost support staff positions because of it. Why wouldn't they suspect that their former staffs would be transferred to ITA, then sometime later moved to another group to work on something else?

Keep on rumbling!

Stupidus Maximus Award Nominee

Thanks to a fellow Rumbler for the following comments and link:

Workforce Management Magazine analyzes the human resources (HR) trends in the public and private sectors and provides the tools that drive business results. Their Optimus Award recognizes forward-thinking management initiatives that achieve amazing business results for their organization. Anybody in ITA meet the requirements? Hmmmm...what about their Stupidus Maximus Award? The Stupidus Maximus Award recognizes the most ignorant, shortsighted and dumb workforce management practice of the year.

Check out their last year's winner:
http://www.workforce.com/section/01/feature/25/46/15/index.html

Have we got Optimus or Stupidus in ITA? And the nominees are.........?

Action or no action

"Dear Rumblings Team,

After reading the posts on the Rumblings in ITA blog, it is pretty obvious that there is a great deal of dissatisfaction with the current crop of political appointees. The terms "management" or "leadership" don't appear to apply in this case. What can be done to improve the situation?

There are three possible paths before us: 1. Nothing changes, 2. Randi and Ken step up and lead the department and 3. Randi and Ken leave the department to be replaced by unknown persons. From the reactions noted on Rumblings, it does not appear that Randi or Ken are likely to change their modus operandi on their own initiative, making the first path the most likely path. For the second path to be taken, there must be some driving force to cause the changes. It is not likely that this blog is sufficient to cause the required change. The third path will be taken when the driving force from the previous path is applied and Randi or Ken refuse to change, seeking career opportunities elsewhere.

Clearly, there is a desire among the rank and file in ITA to bring about change for the better. It does not take a rocket scientist to understand how politics works in Los Angeles, and the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that our voices can be heard. Not simply posting our grievances on Rumblings, but by using the same mechanisms that drive the elected leadership of our fair City to bring about the changes needed so that the rank and file can do their jobs efficiently, effectively and without fear of coercion, retaliation or the corrupt effects of inappropriate influence from self serving contractors and vendors.

How can this be done? The strategy is to influence our Mayor and select Council members through lobbying and financial support. The Mayor will run for re-election next year, and needs about $1 Million to keep his job. By combining efforts, we can get the attention of the Mayor and Council. This is completely legal, ethical and unstoppable. Unless Randi or Ken has made some sort of egregious error, it is unlikely that either will be fired outright. But probing questions concerning their effectiveness can make their lives difficult, so difficult that they will either change (unlikely) or seek employment elsewhere (remember John Hwang, Jesse Juarros and Liza Lowrey???). We have three avenues to do this:

1. Contact our various union leadership and ask them to visit the Mayor and select Council members. We need to detail the dubious deeds of Randi and Ken to the unions so they can ask the Mayor and Council members to investigate. If they don't want to pursue the matter, the Union can remind them that their endorsement, and cash, can be directed to their opponents come election time. The down side of this is that the unions may not feel that our little department is worth spending their political capital to support. The up side is the anonymity by using the union business representatives as our advocate.

2. Each of us can contribute up to $1,000 to the Mayor's re-election campaign and $500 to a Council member's campaign. Strings attached. We can also contribute to the campaigns of the respective opponents. The down side is that there is no anonymity, your name will be known. The up side is that Randi or Ken can not prove that you did anything more than support a candidate for office, something both of them do.

3. We form a Political Action Committee (PAC) with the stated objective of promoting effective policies and legislation related to the use of technology in Los Angeles government. We contribute our own money, and seek contribution from our industry partners, especially those who have been shut out by the improper influence over Randi and Ken. The PAC then puts its weight, which could be significant, behind the effort to remove Randi and Ken, and to persuade the Mayor and Council to adopt good IT policies. The down side is that there may not be anonymity for contributors. The up side is that we can bring in much more money (equals influence) to bring about the changes we need.

The choice is clear, you can cry about being called a coward or you can show Ms. Levin and Mr. Simmons that we have picked up the gauntlet. Game on!

Please feel free to respond to LATechnologyPAC@gmail.com"

Rumblings thanks you for your great e-mail.

Another e-mail from staff

An e-mail came in Friday from a frustrated ITA staffer trying to do their job but needing to jump through hoops to get that work done:

Subject: What are they trying to hide ???

Fellow Rumblers, it has come to my attention that Randi and her 14th floor cronies have given orders to lock-out access to many of the folders on the networked shared drives. What exactly do they have to hide? Is this the Pentagon with Top Secret, highly classified information? Last time I checked, this was a public entity with fiduciary duty to be open and honest with the public, let alone it's employees. In fact, with this continued suppression of information, will Rumblings become the only source news and views withing ITA?

First, thanks for the e-mail.

Second, not one thing that Rumblings has published and shed light on was pulled off of any ITA file server. Everything was published officially by ITA or culled from the internet. All of it was disemminated to ITA staff, for the first time through this blog.

This further shows the narrow sightedness of your management.

Rumblings receives a kind word

Rumblings wants to send a shout out and thank you to both Leslie Dutton of the Full Disclosure Network and Zuma Dogg of the LA Daily Blog for recognizing our efforts to bring transparency to all things ITA.

Check out their sites when you can:

http://www.fulldisclosure.net/

http://ladailyblog.blogspot.com/

E-mail from staff

Subject: Vehicle reduction plan

So now our wonderful Mayor in order to show the public to what lengths he is willing to go to help the City's budget deficit woes has directed his staff to give up their City vehicles.

This directive has now been extended to ITA which has been told to reduce it's fleet by 10%. Never mind that the largest pool of vehicles in ITA is used to service mission critical public safety communications, never mind the fact the vehicles are used daily to service the City's network and communications infrastructure, support it's business needs, it's ability to generate revenue and collect taxes, etc., without such support the City would cease to function. So never mind, cut your vehicle pool by 10% across the board without regard to operational needs. Make your sacrifice like his Honor and his staff.

What possible savings can be realized from such a boneheaded plan? The vehicles in question are not perks used for convenience sake, but essential transportation for mission critical communications support. Will Bureau of Sanitation be asked to reduce it's fleet of trash trucks by 10%? Or will LAPD and LAFD be told to reduce their patrol cars and fire trucks by 10%? The public wouldn't put up with having to wait for emergency responders at the scene of a crime or fire, or suffer delays in having trash collected from the City streets, so why put the public at risk by reducing field service vehicles supporting public safety communications?

The management in our department and the leadership in this City is asleep at the wheel.

Guess it ain't so bad afterall

"Have you seen the 4th Financial Status Report that was released by the CAO on 3/12/08?

http://cityclerk.lacity.org/CFI/DisplayOnlineDocument.cfm?SRT=D1&cfnum=07-0600-S82

The City's budget deficit has been reduced to approximately $12.44 million for the current fiscal year (see page 1, second paragraph).

Albeit this is due to various budget balancing recommendations throughout the year that Council and Mayor have adopted in order to reduce the deficit (like transferring from one account to another, etc.).

However, the bottom line remains....the deficit that they projected at mid-year (January/February) of $154.9 million has now shrunk to $12.44 million in two months time. (Amazing!)

This is what they do ... get everyone riled up and worried about layoffs so that we will agree to anything (like a renegotiation of the raises recently approved) ... and then end the year on budget or with a surplus.

Let's see if the $400-$500 million projected deficit for next fiscal year will be as 'accurate' as the estimates for the current fiscal year.

Maybe at the yard sale where we sell Randi's "old" office furniture, we could sell the plasma TV that was recently installed in the front reception area for non-existent visitors that was purchased in this fiscal year...remember, the same fiscal year that we are projecting such a deficit in ITA. The only one reaping any benefit from the TV is the receptionists".

One has to wonder will the Mini Mayor hold a press conference to announce these exciting developments? Highly unlikely.

Rumble away!

Whistleblower hotline

The City Ethics Commission also has a whistleblower hotline:

Anonymously report suspected violations of governmental ethics, campaign finance or lobbying laws.

http://ethics.lacity.org/whistleblower/whistleblower.cfm

What are the Governmental Ethics Laws that our leaders should be keeping?

You can find them here: http://ethics.lacity.org/PDF/LACityEthicsCode.pdf

Controller's Fraud Hotline

An email to Rumblings wanted to remind ITA staff that the Office of the Controller operates a confidential hotline for City employees, contractors, citizens and other interested parties to report fraud, waste and abuse affecting City resources.

The City has contracted with an independent company (The Network) whose trained intake specialists will receive all calls and web-based reports. You may remain anonymous.

CALL: 1-866-428-1514 (toll free 24 hrs - 7 days/week)

Or file a web-based report: https://www.tnwinc.com/webreport/default.asp

A fellow Rumbler wonders...

...where have all the links gone? Last year when I googled Ken Simmons I followed, along with my other incredulous ITA colleagues that wondered,"who the hell is this guy and where did he come from?", the trail of his antics at Redondo Beach up to a "worst boss ever" award on a City blog from a harried LA Housing employee. The links are now gone. No references to his being fired, spying on police unions, shell games with RB library funds...gone all gone. Has Simmons enlisted the help of a search engine cleaner like defendmyname.com ? Well his doings at ITA are starting him on the road to a new Internet presence thanks to your blog. Keep on rumbling!

Thanks ! The Rumblings will continue and there will be no short-cut to clean up his latest messes.