System Development

Although I was supervisor of a small group that had an important function the Department, I was still pretty low down in the administrative hierarchy. Management did not routinely consult me before making major decisions. Still, I thought I had a good understanding of the Department’s computer systems needs and believed in the free exchange of ideas.

In January 1977, Dr. Dempsey announced an ambitious system development plan for the year that called for the installation of 4 major systems. A few weeks later, under circumstances I can only guess about, I talked to him personally. I told him I had concerns about the plan and he asked me to put them in writing. Big mistake. I wrote him a 5-page memo telling him he was “trying to do too much in too short a time.” The memo concluded with a list of people who could provide more information and the suggestion that he would “get less candid answers if Paul Allen and Bill Nash were present.” Allen was his Chief Deputy Director and Nash was director of the Bureau of Management Information Systems (BuMIS). I made sure my memo was widely distributed.

On March 17, I got a memo from the director of Clare County DSS thanking me for “telling it like it is.”

On May 4 I got a letter from the Michigan Council of Social Service Workers giving their “whole-hearted support.”

Department officials spent a lot of time that summer reassuring county DSS administrators that big new systems would not be implemented hastily, but there was still a lot of resistance. I cited some of it in an unsolicited analysis of “System Development in the Department of Social Services” in January 1978. Don Czinder, my supervisor, questioned my methods and my conclusions in a January 23 memo. I responded February 1, expressing frustration at not being listened to. He responded February 3, saying that the best way to improve the way we built systems was to work openly within the system.