CPD to the Rescue

A reader wrote to point us to a quote from City of Claremont Information Systems Manager Steve Senkle on the website of a company called Laserfiche. Laserfiche is the company that provides the city´s online archive service - you know, the one where the employee pay stubs were publicly posted a while back.

Turns out that Laserfiche asked Senkle, the one in charge of Claremont´s stellar IT department, to give them an endorsement. Here's what he wrote (see page 4):

“Our Laserfiche document management system was working so well for City Hall we decided to try it in the Police Department. It took half an hour to get Laserfiche working with the law enforcement CAD/RMS system.”

—Steve Senkle,Information Systems Manager, City of Claremont,
California

Odd, no mention of the city having to shut down their archive access or City Attorney Sonia Carvalho ending up with egg on her face trying to quash the posting of the information Senkle made available with the help of Laserfiche´s system.

Knowing Claremont´s record of placing competent people in key positions, you´d think that Senkle had his Ph.D in electrical engineering and a long history in the tech industry or some such equivalent level of education and expertise. Guess again. Senkle came to us courtesy of the Claremont Police Department.

All of which prompted our reader to comment:

The real question is was the guy ever qualified to get a $126k+salaried IT job being his only background appears to be working as apolice officer in the City of Claremont. I doubt he has any degree in the field, nepotism being his only qualification. Moreover, he is making more money that most people I know who work for tech leaders Yahoo! and Google in their Los Angeles offices.

All of which makes us wonder where the real crime is in town. At least it´s good to know we´ve got Barney Fife watching over our sensitive tech issues.

$7430.65 Performance Bonus in 2006 for Claremont Information SNAFU Manager

Saturday's Claremont Courier had a page 3 article on Paystubgate which was teased on Page 1 with the headline, "Payroll SNAFU explained". It seemed a little curious for "SNAFU" to appear in all caps until we were reminded of the etymology of "SNAFU". It is apparently, or perhaps apocryphally, an acronym derived from a phrase going something like, "Situation Normal, All Fouled Up". Since this is a family blog, we think we will leave it at that.

The article in the Courier (which regrettably is not on the Courier website or we'd link to it) adds a little to the earlier Daily Bulletin article. For one thing, it says that the City has no intention of making the report on this, well, SNAFU, public:

"The experts have requested that the report not be released due to the fact that the information in the report could create security threats to our computer system," said [City Manager] Mr. [Jeff] Parker, citing the report's detailed examination of the city's security practices.

"It's definitely their choice. There is a lot of information in those reports that could compromise security going forward," said Michael Fitzpatrick of NCX [a computer security consultant hired by the city to investigate the incident].

Excuse us?

Do the hypersensitive antennae of the Insider detect a common Claremont ploy at play here? Parker blames the "expert" for hiding the ball. The expert says that hiding the ball is the City's decision. Did somebody not get the memo?

(You don't have to go too far back in city history, say to the October 9th Council meeting, to hear about a similar two-step concerning information on the Palmer Canyon fire settlement.)

We are wondering what the California government code says about this. We suspect someone will be making a public records request for this report, because we know there are scads and scads of people wanting to see it. You'd think if NCX and the City of Claremont have built an impenetrable system, they'd want people to know it.

Steve Senkle, Claremont's Information SNAFU Manager, was quoted in the Courier article, "It won't be possible in the future for this mistake of the confidential records being made available because our confidential database will not be connected to the Internet". There you have it. Can't happen. Won't happen. Believe it. This time.

By the way, Steve Senkle is another of Claremont's $200,000 Men. In 2006, his total earnings including allowances, vacation, sick and other compensation amounted to $126.563.38. He received a remarkable $7430.65 performance bonus, amounting to more than 9.1% of his regular pay. His benefits were a staggering $78,296.80. His total compensation through 12/22/06 for 2006: $204,860.18. Not bad for a computer guy with a broken system.

[note: the emphases in the quotes above by Parker and Fitzpatrick were added by us. See here for another example of the Claremont two-step.]

Oh, for an interesting image still up on Google, click here. Don't blame us, Sonia. We've reformed, as you see. Take it up with Google.