State to delay software upgrade by two years

BATON ROUGE -- Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration agreed Wednesday to postpone the statewide implementation of a $101 million computer software upgrade by two years in favor of doing a pilot project.

The deal came in the wake of questions about the project that were raised by state Treasurer John Kennedy and appears to resolve, at least for the time being, a tug-of-war between the administration and treasurer's office that spilled into public view earlier this month as a blue-ribbon panel studied ways to streamline government.

Most state agencies had been scheduled to start using the new Enterprise Resource Planning software in mid-2010. The software upgrade, which has been under way since Gov. Kathleen Blanco's administration, is designed to get all state agencies using the same software for business functions such as budgeting, check processing and inventory control.

Called LaGov, the project would replace more than 40 financial and administrative systems currently in use across state agencies.

The state has already spent $52 million on the project, but its future had been in doubt as Kennedy's office refused to participate in the upgrade and called for the project to be put on hold while a thorough cost-benefit study was conducted.

Instead of going statewide, only the Department of Transportation and Development -- the agency whose aging accounting systems are considered most vulnerable to a potential crash -- will "go live" with the new software next October. If the new system works as advertised, the rest of state government will likely start using the software in 2012.

Commissioner of Administration Angele Davis said the state expects to save $8.5 million in the current and upcoming fiscal years by delaying implementation. That means the state will end up spending more than $91 million to upgrade a single agency's computer software, instead of $101 million to upgrade all of state government....