San Diego City Hall's OneSD Program at $37 Million and Counting

During a city revenues update to the Budget and Finance Committee on Wednesday morning, chair Anthony Young asked for a date when committee members could view the City's revenue receipts for fiscal year 2010 to better predict the upcoming year's revenues.

Chief Operating Officer Jay Goldstone approached the microphone: "Some of the revenues we probably can. There are some revenues where we are charging from one department to the other because of the conversion to the OneSD program and the new payroll system...we're still closing the books on some of those charges."

The OneSD program that Goldstone referred to is the City's new software system that connects departments and allows employees to view other departments' budgets and vendor contracts with a click of the mouse. The OneSD program cost the city more than $37 million and thousands more in employee staff time to implement. Judging by Goldstone's comments, the implementation is not complete.

"Will the year-end 2010 [financial] report be in by December 1?" asked independent budget analyst Andrea Tevlin.

After a brief pause, city comptroller Ken Whitfield took Goldstone's place at the microphone.

"It's really an all hands on deck situation," said Whitfield. "Payroll to the employees is fine, but the behind the scenes and what gets charged to what are some of the interface issues that are being resolved. That's the situation. It really is a one-time situation with the way that OneSD software system interfaces.... Unfortunately, it's part of the growing pains of new-system implementation," said Whitfield.

Councilmember Young asked Whitfield if his department expected further delays implementing the OneSD system.

"No, I think it's typical. I think it takes about a year to work through implementation and glitches."