Mayor de Blasio is grounding NASA.
Consultants from the space agency were hired two years ago by de Blasio’s predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, to solve mounting technical problems with the city’s $2 billion overhaul of its 911 system.
But now our new mayor is scrubbing NASA’s $13.2 million contract for the project, and he wants city officials to take over mission control themselves, the Daily News has learned.
De Blasio’s surprise move comes after his top aides spent two months probing why the massive 911 system overhaul is years behind schedule and nearly $1 billion over budget.
Among the key problems they disclosed in August: Multiple layers of high-priced private consultants from scores of companies had launched the project’s bottom line into the stratosphere.
That review, and separate reports by city Controller Scott Stringer and Department of Investigation Commissioner Mark Peters, criticized City Hall for providing insufficient oversight — with Peters promising to reveal more detailed findings this fall.
The city is “changing fundamentally” the way it conducts the 911 system overhaul by no longer depending on “outside vendors to supervise other outside vendors,” said Anne Roest, commissioner of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications.
De Blasio named Roest in May to serve as the city’s point person to spearhead all necessary fixes to the 911 program and to curb its skyrocketing costs.
From now on, “we want to be actively managing the project,” she said, and as part of the new policy, “NASA and the city agreed that the quality-assurance work being performed under the existing contract would be insourced and performed by city employees.”
NASA’s contract was actually a small one compared to those for some of the other vendors working on the overhaul. Bloomberg sought the space agency’s help in 2012, following a series of embarrassing delays and technology failures by big-name vendors such as Verizon, Hewlett-Packard and Northrop Grumman.
Up to 20 NASA consultants had spent the past two years working on the project, at average annual salaries of $250,000. They’ve conducted technical designs for new radios and computer dispatch systems. That technology will eventually link police, FDNY and emergency medical system dispatchers and field units to the city’s main emergency call center in downtown Brooklyn, and to a still-unfinished backup call center in the Bronx.
City officials did not say they were dissatisfied with NASA’s performance. They simply believe the work can be done cheaper in-house.
NASA has already received $9.8 million from its $13.2 million contract, which was set to expire next April. The city’s decision means NASA will lose the remaining $3.4 million. The contract also included an option for a two-year, $4.1 million extension. Since the 911 overhaul is not expected to be completed until 2017, taxpayers could thus save up to $7.5 million from the cancellation.
Some will inevitably question whether the city’s technology workers can perform like those NASA folks — or all those other consultants pulling in huge salaries.
We’ll soon find out. But one thing is sure: Those skyrocketing costs will come back to Earth.
