LANSING – Some of the changes the state has made spending tens of
millions of dollars upgrading computer systems may not have gone smoothly, but
some praise the upgrades. Dominic Perone, an inspector for the Department of
Agriculture and Rural Development, said the EZAM and Exam-Hand software the
department has been using for grain dealers has saved time for both the
inspectors and the dealers.
The system keeps better ongoing
inventory for the dealers, Perone said.
“We are starting to shift our
audits into more of a balance sheet type audit where we able to drill a little
deeper into the balance sheet,” he said. “We’re not having to spend
as much time with the physical labor part of the audit. …We only need to
measure one or two of their storage bins instead of having to measure the
entire facility.”
And he said the software could
provide similar benefits for feed and pesticide inspectors.
While DTMB leaders acknowledged
issues with some of the larger programs developed recently, they said the
larger victory has been in trying to head off such problems in the future.
“Today, we have consistent
portfolio project management methodology in place across all IT,” Swanson
said. “We have gotten very good at managing projects, managing
expectations, managing scopes with our agencies and we can report out in a very
near real-time basis. That is a major improvement in the last three years as
well.”
State IT leaders are also trying to
spend more time with the workers who will use the systems. Swanson said
developers have been visiting local human services offices to both collect
concerns and to watch how the system actually works.
McFarlane said the department is
trying to do that more with all of the systems it develops.
“We need to think how users
would utilize the system and make it more efficient for them,” he said.
“We’re always thinking about how to make things better and work with our
agency partners to make things more efficient.”
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