STATE OF COLORADO

Department of State 1700 Broadway

Suite 200

Denver, CO 80290

Scott Gessler Secretary of State

Suzanne Staiert Deputy Secretary of State

Main Number

Administration

Fax

(303) 894-2200 ext. 6383

(303) 860-6900

(303) 869-4860

TDD

Web Site

E-mail

(303) 869-4867

www.sos.state.co.us

cpfhelp@sos.state.co.us

May 6, 2014

The Honorable John Hickenlooper

State of Colorado

136 State Capitol

Denver, CO 80203

Dear Governor Hickenlooper:

I’m writing to express my grave concern about the scheduled roll out of the state’s new

accounting and financial control system, the Colorado Operations and Resource Engine (CORE).

For the past six months, my staff has attended briefings, participated in the training, and carefully

assessed CORE’s impact on my office. It is a good software system—but frankly, this project is

nowhere near ready to launch. The switchover to a new system should wait—otherwise, you will

be entrusting critical accounting and financial controls to an untested and unprepared system. It

is a disaster in the making.

Your staff has already admitted this will be a “bumpy” rollout. Those bumps grow larger every

day as the go-live date draws near. Here are just a few recent examples:

• The most recent Project Status Report from nearly two months ago listed the project as

“Behind schedule, with no approved recovery plan(s) identified.” We remain in the dark

on any new status reports but from what we’re hearing and seeing, it doesn’t look good.

• During a recent training, our office representative asked whether the system had controls

in place to ensure agencies did not exceed legislatively-imposed limits. The trainer said

yes, and invited our representative to try it out, in real-time. The system failed

completely. It concerns me that even the trainers are unaware of system deficiencies.

• Another representative recently attended training scheduled in Colorado Springs.

Everyone was turned away because training was not ready.

• The online training program recently crashed, because it failed to account for 3,500 users,

instead planning for only 1,200.

Neither I, nor my staff, see any likelihood that this project will be ready for the roll-out date. As

noted above, two months ago there was no plan for recovery, and we have not yet seen anything

to indicate that things have improved. Furthermore, the Office of Information Technology has

hemorrhaged senior management talent within the last few months, and the senior directors

facilitating the roll out have left or resigned, including:

Complete

Colorado

.com

2

• The resignation announcement from Secretary of Technology & State Chief Information

Officer Kristen Russell

• The resignation of Chief Technology Officer Sherri Hammons

• The resignation of Director of Enterprise Applications Rich Matsumoto

• The resignation of Chief Operating Officer Mike Dillon, and

• The resignation of Chief Customer Officer Mike Richey.

This loss of talented leadership, along with the generally poor morale at OIT (as highlighted by

the recent Employee Engagement Survey) leaves my staff and me with little confidence the

system will be successfully deployed on July 1.

By rushing toward a July 1 roll out, we are accepting too much risk at our customers’ expense.

Our taxpayers and constituents still reel from the Colorado Benefits Management System

(CBMS) debacle. We now know one of CBMS’ failures was the lack of training. Yet the CORE

project follows the same line of failure.

My staff and I are invested in this project and we want to see it succeed. Colorado taxpayers

deserve success—a success measured by the quality of the product delivered, not simply a

deadline met. This current path to failure is a train wreck about to happen—with another train

heading down the tracks.

I implore you to re-evaluate the project’s timetable. We need to spend additional time to ensure

this new accounting and financial system is fully integrated into existing software systems. We

need to ensure that state employees get the high-quality training they deserve. And we need to

ensure that we have the leadership and managerial capabilities in place to launch a functional

system.

My staff stands ready to assist with the successful implementation of this project on a timetable

that works.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Scott Gessler

Secretary of State

Complete

Colorado

.com