Is there anything in California water which induces state bureaucrats to make errors of bone judgment? It seems that this is the case, given the desolate story of monumental screw screws.
Many erroneous actions of the government government involve aborted efforts to use advanced technology.
The poster child for these cases of high -tech basket was the financial information system for California, nicknamed Fi $ Cal, which was supposed to be a complete financial management system but has been having a hard time for decades to become functional in a reliable manner. Its constant delays and cost overruns have revealed that despite the global role of California in technological innovation, the state bureaucracy was chronically unable to implement systems that operate as promised.
Another technological fiasco occurred in the judicial system. The State Council of the State and the administrative office of the courts launched a project in 2002 which was supposed to be a system for the management of centralized cases. It was so deficient that after a decade of wheel waste costing more than half a million dollars, the project was abandoned.
The most spectacular example of mismanagement is the attempt at the state development department of the State to distribute billions of dollars in unemployment insurance services to those who lost jobs during the Pandemic COVID-19. Not only did EDD not provide payments to many workers who needed it in a timely time, but it sent tens of billions of dollars in payments to fraudsters who played the system.
California does not need another participant on its list of management failures, but it has one in what happened when the state bar changed its budding lawyer test.
The license agency felt a financial pinch and made its own test to save money. When the exam was administered in February, it was a disaster.
“The online test platforms have crashed several times before some candidates begin,” said Los Angeles Times. “Others have struggled to finish and record tests, have screen delays and error messages and could not copy and paste text from test questions in the response field – a function that those responsible had declared would be possible.”
Since then, the officials of the State Bar, examination takers, legislators and judges of the Supreme Court of the State have argued on what should be done with the manifestly imperfect results, in particular after it was revealed that the agency used artificial intelligence to formulate exams – without making it known.
Last week, the Supreme Court lowered the passage score for the February exam and ordered the State Bar to empty its new system and return to traditional test format.
On Monday, the state bar announced that with the lower crossing scores, 55.9% of the February exams have successfully completed, as well as 76.5% of those who have spent a one -day exam, which means that the state has 2,436 new lawyers.
Simultaneously, the state bar declared that it was continuing the learning of the measures, the seller who administered the rocky exam of February, for fraud. The disaster also claimed the executive director of the State Bar, Leah T. Wilson. Wilson said she was resigning in July when her $ 400,000 annual contract should expire.
“Despite our best intentions, the experiences of candidates for the February bar exam was simply unacceptable, and I fully recognize the frustration and stress that this experience caused,” said Wilson. “Although there are no words to appease these emotions, I sincerely apologize.”
Wilson’s apologetic declaration is a refreshing gap in the escape of responsibility which traditionally accompanies official debacles. It is progress of a kind, but not to make bad decisions would be preferable.
Dan Walters is a calm columnist.
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
