Can We Call

Is it too much to hope that I could get through a year without loss of service? Made it to February anyway. I guess that's something.

Thursday, Feb 20, 2009

I woke to find my internet service wasn't working. I confirmed it wasn't my equipment. The lights on the cable modem acknowledged the problem to be at the modem or beyond it. So I called Comcast.

Ricardo answered. I explained the problem and said it showed the same symptoms as the previous outage I had back in July. I mentioned this because the tech who visited me then promised that someone would come back and complete the fix or else the problem would recur.

Me: (paraphrase) That was in July. And no one ever came back.
Ricardo: (paraphrase) According to my records, someone did come out and fix it.
Me: They may have fixed something but it wasn't the right thing. The splitter on the pole wasn't touched and it was supposed to be removed. Could you send someone who can do the right job?
Ricardo: I can give you an appointment for a technician to come to your home on Saturday between 8-11am.
Me: Thank you.
Ricardo: Do you have a phone number for the technician to call before he comes over?
Me: I have VOIP, so without internet service, he won't be able to reach me.
Ricardo: How about a cell phone number?
Me: Cell service is unreliable. Just have the tech come without calling. I'll be here.
Ricardo: Ok, I'll write that on the ticket. He'll come without calling. But I have to warn you that if he's running late, he'll have no way to contact you.
Me: I understand.

Here's a picture of the splitter in question - installed by Comcast.


Friday

Late Friday, I found the internet connection was active. But I still wanted the tech to come out and fix the connectors so I looked forward to Saturday morning.

Saturday

8-11am. No one showed. When 11am came, I assumed the tech was running late so I didn't worry.

At 3pm, I figured there's no way a tech could be running this far behind but I had to leave the house to run an errand so I called Comcast just to make sure the tech wouldn't waste his time trying to visit me even this late.

Me: It's 3pm. What happened to the technician?
Anika: The appointment was cancelled because there was no phone number to call.
Me: Are you sure? I specifically told Ricardo that I had no working phone and just to come over. Ricardo said he was writing down that there was no phone and the tech should come over without calling. Are you sure there are no notes to that effect?
Anika: There is no such note.

Me: Can we get Ricardo on the phone? Let's clear this up right now.
Anika: Ok, just tell me his extension.
Me: You want me to tell you his extension?
Anika: Yes, that's the only way I can get in touch with other people here.
Me: He gave me his name. That's not enough?
Anika: The call center is very large, sir. I cannot do anything with just his name.
Me: Can I speak to a supervisor? I'd like to formally complain about Ricardo or find out what's going on.
Anika: There are no supervisors here on Saturday. Call back during the week.

Anika offered to credit me $20 for the missed appointment and offered to reschedule the appointment.

Anika: Can I reschedule you now? I might be able to send someone there later today.
Me: No thank you. I can't wait here any longer.

We ended the phone call and I left the house at that point.

7pm. I returned later that evening and found a note from a Comcast technician on my front door. The technician noted that the "Scheduled Work Date and Time" for the job was 2-5pm. He noted that he arrived at 4:38pm.

A couple of observations can be drawn from this episode. The first is that either someone is lying or Comcast's system for taking notes isn't working. In fact, this isn't the first time I've encountered this problem.

Second, there's no explanation for how a technician would summarily cancel an appointment on his own. Just because there's no phone number isn't a useful reason. (Even a non-answering number isn't a good reason as I explained in a previous posting.)

Third, there's no explanation for the 2-5pm appointment. Where did it come from? It couldn't have been Anika because I told her I couldn't wait at the house any longer. I specifically told her not to send a technician later in the day. Could the technician just have decided on his own? Without even contacting the customer? What kind of communication is there between the people answering the phone and the techs in the field? Or rather why is it so bad? Here's a more detailed reminder.

Lastly, I have now learned that just because a Comcast representative gives me a name, I should also ask for a phone number. I've never heard of this nonsense before but ok, I'll play along if that's what it takes.

I will file a formal complaint with Montgomery County. Not only is something seriously broken with Comcast's customer support but my connection is still problematic - and it's been this way for 8 months.

Transparency Not Either

I recently described a state bill to create a website that would enable the public to see MCPS purchases - and my testimony at Annapolis requesting to remove the $10K threshold. To recap, the legislators didn't seem interested in the removal idea. I have since found out that they did exactly the opposite! Yes, they raised the threshold to $25K.

My only thought: We must vote these people out of office at the next opportunity. Let me know if you have better suggestions.

Montgomery County's Turn

Now Montgomery County is considering a similar bill for county purchases, Council Bill 1-09. Curiously, it has the same problem - the bill only requires transparency for purchases $25K or higher. What is with these people that they cannot think of amounts less than $25K?

The county council is scheduled to take action on this bill next week (Feb 24 2009) so you still have several days to weigh in. I submitted essentially the same letter that I did to the state but this time focusing more clearly on the limit, even going so far as to put my thrust in the subtitle in English that even a 5th grader would understand. Here it is:

Comments On Bill 1-09 Finance - Spending Disclosure

Summary: Good bill but would be better if the $25,000 limit was removed.

Don Libes
February 5, 2009
I strongly support the intent of Bill 1-09 - to provide transparency of county purchases. But while thousand dollar purchases need disclosure, so do smaller ones. Many inappropriate purchases are less than a thousand dollars or even a hundred dollars - exorbitant lunches and gifts, unjustifiable travel, and so on. Limits, whether $25,000 or $10,000, are easy to avoid. It’s not hard to break up a million-dollar purchase of electronic whiteboards or computers in to groups of purchases that fall below the limit. It requires little effort to do - a few more clicks of the mouse.

So pass the bill but without dollar limits and without qualifying words such as “aggregate” that could delay disclosure. Rather, the website should report any purchase that the county tracks using its existing financial management system. The cost of this change would be negligible given that the purchases are already in an existing database. And disk space is cheap. $100 buys enough space to hold decades worth of purchase information.

We should take a cue from our new president. On his first day of office, President Obama issued a memorandum indicating that, unless there is a justifiable reason to withhold information, records must be public by default. If there is a justifiable reason for the $25K limit, I have yet to hear it. Disclosure should not have to wait for specific requests from the public.

I close with the following words from Obama's memorandum. Accountability is in the interest of the government as well as the citizenry. As Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”

Transparency? Not.

Transparency is sweeping the land. Or is it?

The federal government has established a website to let you see what the government is spending your money on (www.USASpending.gov) and Maryland has created a similar spending website for state purchases (www.spending.dbm.maryland.gov).

Council Bill 1-09 has been drafted to create a similar website at the county level, sponsored by Councilmembers Andrews and Berliner.

Unfortunately, the school system (MCPS) has fallen through the cracks. County lawyers assert that MCPS does not have to yield its data to the state or the country websites. So another bill has been drafted to force the creation of a website specifically for MCPS. This bill is MC 930-09, sponsored by Delegate Alfred Carr. (Carr's connection to telecomm issues? He succeeded Jane Lawton, the past MC Cable Administrator whose untimely passing left the seat available. Carr's previous job? A manager at Verizon!)

Unfortunately, all of these bills share one common problem. The reporting levels are too high. The state website and proposed county website only require reporting of purchases $25K or higher. Carr's MCPS bill has a level of $10K or higher.

I believe the level should be much less. The bill's author explained to me that the $10K limit was simply chosen as a reflection of the smaller budget of MCPS compared to the state. The state's $25K limit was based on a figure used to require additional signatures during purchasing. But just because purchases require less oversight doesn't mean they shouldn't be public. To the contrary, the smallest purchases are made with the least oversight. Obviously, they need public disclosure as much as big purchases, just for a different reason.

And it should be easy extend the proposed website to smaller purchases. (How hard is it to remove the limit from an SQL query? Sigh.) And what would it cost? At 1TB for $100, we could fit the entire MCPS purchase history on a single disk. It is my understanding that the data is already tracked internally by MCPS in a single database. Periodic copies to an external mirror should be trivial. And since the website would be read-only, security risks are minimal.

With that in mind, I encourage you to contact your county councilmembers and state delegates and request that they lower the dollar limits on these bills.

Here is the text of my own testimony that I presented at Annapolis at a public hearing on the measure. (Yes, it is short! Individuals are limited to two minutes.)

Testimony on MC 930-09
Funding Accountability and Transparency Act
Don Libes
January 30, 2009

My name is Don Libes. I’m representing myself, a typical taxpayer and parent with a child in public school. I thank you for the opportunity to testify on this legislation.

I strongly support its intent - to provide transparency in the purchases by my public school system. I have been repeatedly dismayed at purchases that surely would not have occurred had the purchasers known that the public would immediately see such inappropriate expenditures.

But many inappropriate purchases are less than a thousand dollars or even a hundred dollars - exorbitant lunches and gifts, unjustifiable travel, and so on. Such limits, whether $10,000 or $25,000, are easy to avoid. It’s not hard to break up a million-dollar purchase of electronic whiteboards or computers in to individual purchases that fall below the limit. It requires little
effort to do - a few more clicks of the mouse.

So pass the bill but without limits and without qualifying words such as "aggregate" that could delay disclosure. The cost of this project is negligible given that the purchases are already in an existing database. And to remove the $10,000 limit requires no additional labor costs.

We should take a cue from our new president. On his first day of office, President Obama issued a memorandum indicating that, unless there is a justifiable reason to withhold information, records must be public by default. Disclosure should not have to wait for specific requests from the public.

I close with the following words from Obama's memorandum. Accountability is in the interest of the government as well as the citizenry. As Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants."

Lest this sound like it ought to have been enough, it wasn't. After delivering my testimony to the MC Delegation, they continued discussion of the merits of the bill with the limit at $10K. Not a single delegate supported lowering the limit.

Two other citizens testified as well. Louis Willen (testimony), representing the Parents Coalition, addressed the technical merits of the website and explained why it would cost much less than MCPS claims. More like $5K. As I mentioned, MCPS already has the data collected. It's just a matter of regularly copying it to a public repository with a query page exposed to the public. However MCPS started out saying that it would cost $200K and then lowered its estimate to "$40 to 50K". But it is apparent that they haven't done their homework and have no real idea of what's involved.

Janis Sartucci also testified, providing real-world examples of purchases that needed the kind of public airing such a website would provide. It's my understanding that when Janis has asked MCPS for data in the past, data that should be public in the first place, MCPS has told her that she must pay the cost of MCPS preparing the data for release. This is an idea right out of the dark ages.

In the end, it may not matter much anyway. MCPS doesn't want to build it unless they are specifically offered new money. And the delegates are unlikely to give the county money for the purpose, instead just saying build it on your own. So if the bill passes without money attached, it's a useless result.

Delegate Carr pointed out that MCPS should be happy to pay for it themselves. After all, it's likely that disclosure of MCPS purchases to the public would ultimately result in thousands of dollars of savings. And it would also reduce the cost of responding to information requests by parents for the purchasing data. Currently, it's all done manually. A parent makes a request and some MCPS staffer has to track down the data, explain how much it will cost to print it, send the estimate back to the parent (or deny the data exists), handle the reply (likely an argument), and so on.

Bottom line: The bill is unlikely to have a useful impact even if passed. But with some simple changes, it has a future. However, the delegates and MCPS need to hear this from the voters.

Final note: As the hearing began, the delegate chair noticed two people operating a professional videocamera. Delegate Brian Feldman, chair of the delegates, asked whether the people were recording audio and video or just taking still photos. After establishing that they were indeed recording both video and audio, the chair insisted they stop recording. None of the other delegates protested again the sad irony - that their own process of making transparency law itself would not be transparent to the public.