L.A. City Hall Still in Technology Dark Ages, Study Says : Government: Panel formed by the mayor cites high costs and threat to public safety. Sweeping changes are proposed.

Failure to incorporate basic technology such as voice mail and computers into city government is costing Los Angeles millions of dollars annually, jeopardizing public safety, and forcing city employees to waste hours every day on tasks that could be easily automated, according to a report to be released today.

In the first comprehensive look at technology in the city since the 1970s, a special advisory committee formed by Mayor Richard Riordan last summer recommends sweeping changes aimed at shepherding Los Angeles into the Information Age.

“The city is decades behind in its implementation of technology,” said committee chairwoman Patricia Nettleship. “Our basic criticism is the lack of very fundamental working tools. It’s difficult to imagine the general public or management or anyone expecting services to be delivered under the current state of affairs.”

The report cites numerous cases where technology is employed poorly or not at all, often simply because progress has made old systems obsolete. When the police and fire departments built their emergency communications systems seven years ago, for example, it was considered acceptable that they could not interact with one another.

But with today’s relatively simple networking technology, it “just isn’t right” that urgent requests for help during the Northridge earthquake were delayed because the two systems--along with the 911 emergency system--have no way of communicating, Nettleship said.

Better communication among city departments--as well as between the city government and its residents--can be easily implemented by installing electronic mail and voice mail systems. And the $800,000 a year spent on maintaining a 25-year-old payroll computer system can be significantly reduced by simply replacing it with modern equipment.

But the report also recommends a massive restructuring of the way that technology is managed in the city, to ensure better communication among departments and to rein in the tendency to pay for costly custom designs when off-the-shelf hardware and software could serve just as well.

Under the current structure, the report states, there is no way to tell how much is being spent on technology in the city. And more than $20 million has been spent over the past five years on contractors for technology projects that have run into major problems.

Los Angeles lags behind other cities in harnessing the increasingly affordable power of computer technology to improve its services--a particularly ironic failure because the city’s geographic sprawl magnifies the benefits of doing business electronically.

The report envisions a not-too-distant future Los Angeles where residents will be able to search public records on touch-screen kiosks in the local grocery store. Businesses will be able to request and receive building permits via modem. The Riordan Administration is expected to push for such changes.

“The first impact the public will see will be in a quicker, more responsive bureaucracy,” said William Ouchi, the mayor’s chief of staff. “Anyone who has anything to do with City Hall knows we’re in the Dark Ages when it comes to information technology. And it’s extremely costly to us to be so backward.”

According to the interviews conducted by the committee--comprising 200 members from the public and private sectors--most residents would be happy if they just knew where to go to report a dead dog on the street.

“The issue of the dog kept coming up,” Nettleship said. “People have to make multiple phone calls to get to the right department because there’s no computerized directory of services in the city. We’re proposing that people don’t go to the city anymore to get things. All sorts of information can be gotten through electronic means. All you’d have to know is what you wanted to do.”