The government of the state that is home to Silicon Valley and is widely considered the global leader in innovative technology continues to be plagued by problems with computers.

On Friday, the California Department of Motor Vehicles reported things were close to normal after a chaotic week of mass computer failures, with just three DMV offices still offline. At one point earlier in the week, more than 120 of the the DMV’s 188 offices statewide were unable to handle such basic tasks as processing requests for new licenses or vehicle registrations.

Both the DMV’s main computer and its primary backup computer suffered what officials called “meltdowns.” In post mortems on the problem, experts outside state government expressed disbelief that both the main and backup computer were directly connected and housed in the same room, making both susceptible to the same risks from overheating, hacking and other problems.

“If their definition of disaster recovery is having primary and backup systems in the same hardware chassis, that’s grotesque,” one expert told The Los Angeles Times.

IT problems with veterans, CalPERS, UC and more

But to followers of the state government, the DMV’s information technology headaches were only the latest in a long line of embarrassing, basic problems.

In June, a report from the state auditor’s office said the California Department of Veterans Affairs had wasted $28 million on an erratic computer system that was supposed to process services and pay bills for care provided to state veterans.

In 2015, the Sacramento Bee reported that attempts to upgrade the state’s payroll and court system computers had been shut down with nothing to show for $850 million in spending. Similar attempts to upgrade payroll computers of the University of California’s campuses and hospitals were reported to be $50 million over budget and two years behind schedule.

In 2013, unemployment benefits for 150,000 residents went unpaid over the Labor Day weekend because of problems with new computers used by the state’s Employment Development Department.

In 2012, the California Public Employees’ Retirement system was besieged by complaints from state retirees whose health insurance policies weren’t being renewed because of problems with CalPERS’ new $514 million computer system.

In 2009, state Controller John Chiang said he was unable to comply with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s order to furlough state workers and reduce their pay during a budget crisis because the state’s computers were based on a programming language from the 1950s — COBOL — and couldn’t readily be reprogrammed.

Chiang faced charges from Republicans that he was just trying to insulate government union workers from the pain of the budget crisis. But John Thomas Flynn, hired by Gov. Pete Wilson as the state’s first chief information officer, said in a 2009 interview with me that he was inclined to believe Chiang.

Candid self-assessment is not the norm

Flynn has described California government’s computer failures as being the direct result of a culture in which no one is punished when bad things happen and candid self-assessment is rate.

Sacramento-based computer consultant Alex Castro offered a similar observation last year to Bee State Worker columnist Jon Ortiz. He said when an organizational cultures refuse to acknowledge their shortcomings, “they run into brick walls: bad leadership, bad tech people, lack of vision, overestimation of (in-house) skill sets.”

But research by the Center for Health Reporting shows that coordination between the two state programs is so weak that tens of thousands of Californians routinely lose health coverage as their incomes fall or rise. The problem is so acute that an anti-poverty group is blasting the state government:

State officials say the transition between Covered California and Medi-Cal is supposed to be “seamless.” …

“There’s not a seamless transition. There’s not someone helping them figure out who to call or how to navigate the system,” says Jen Flory, senior attorney at the Western Center on Law and Poverty. “Frankly, it’s not working correctly.” …

The UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education estimates that 16.5 percent of Medi-Cal enrollees will become eligible for Covered California during the course of a year because of income increases. 

On the other hand, about one in five people with subsidized Covered California plans will drop into Medi-Cal or other public coverage, the center estimates.

If you have a Covered California plan, you may be bumped into Medi-Cal when the agency attempts to verify your eligibility, says spokesman Dana Howard.

This could happen midyear, when Covered California checks sources such as federal tax records to determine whether your income matches the estimate you gave when you enrolled. Last year, about 85,000 people were determined eligible for Medi-Cal during this process, he says.

Story has a familiar villain: computer problems

This poor service isn’t largely the result of bureaucratic indifference or incompetence. It’s driven by the same problems with information technology that have caused headaches for the state’s paymaster (the controller’s office), CalPERS, the DMV, the Department of Consumer Affairs and the agencies overseeing prisons, courts, social services and the distribution of unemployment checks. As the Center for Health Reporting notes:

Covered California and Medi-Cal computer systems “aren’t talking to each other very well. The county will say one thing and Covered California will say another thing,” says Cori Racela, associate director of policy and litigation for Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County. “It’s the consumer who falls between the cracks.”

Many consumers don’t find out they’ve been incorrectly switched until afterward, says Sonal Ambegaokar, senior attorney at the National Health Law Program.

“There’s often a gap in coverage before they can get reenrolled,” she says. “During that time, they have medical needs that are not being addressed.”

IT snafus afflict both health agencies

So why haven’t the two agencies responsible for the health coverage of 13 million-plus Californians done a better job of coordinating their computers? Probably because both have struggled with their computers in handling their primary responsibilities.

Last April, Medi-Cal had a staggering backlog of 900,000 unprocessed applications — 300,000 in Los Angeles County alone.

Computer problems have been an issue with Covered California from the moment it began taking online applications in 2013. Last year, a three-day software malfunction and other headaches led to problems with 37,000 applications. Glitches continue to be common this year.

If the two agencies’ computers don’t work well on their own, they’re unlikely to work well in sync.