King County, WA — King County's new multimillion-dollar telephone system is causing dropped calls and other problems for the public and county employees.
"I've heard from a lot of my constituents," King County Councilmember Rod Dembowski said. "I've heard from some of my mayors, when they try to reach our office, that they're frustrated.
The county is spending about $18.6 million to replace about 11,250 old phones with high-tech new ones that use the Internet and run Microsoft Lync.
About 50 percent have been installed since the project began in 2011.
"Are you concerned about potential cost overruns?" KIRO 7 asked Dembowski.
"Very concerned about that, given the problems and challenges that we're hearing," he said.
Employees have to boot up and sign into their computers before they can even make calls.
A survey of the legislative department dated Feb. 24 found that of the 54 people who responded, 39 of them had problems with their phones. The most common problems were call quality or clarity and dropped calls, followed by problems transferring calls.
At a Government Accountability and Oversight Committee meeting Tuesday, councilmembers questioned King County Information Technology Director Bill Kehoe.
"There's nothing more frustrated than an angry citizen who gets even more angry and frustrated when the phone is dropped when trying to transfer a call," King County Councilmember Pete von Reichbauer said.
"Yes, sir, we acknowledge that," Kehoe said.
Kehoe called the problems “unacceptable.”
KIRO 7 asked him how he plans to respond to them.
"In some cases that's a training issue," Kehoe said. "Our younger staff really take to it easily, but we do have to provide some training that we didn't anticipate early on. We're really beefing up the training for all staff."
Kehoe also said it's not the equipment; it's about setting it up properly so people can use it the way they want, which county staff is working on now.
"Do you feel as though this project is going to finish on budget?" KIRO 7 asked.
"I do," Kehoe said. "We're very confident of that."
Dembowski said he expects updated information from Kehoe in April. He also expects to hear more from MTG Management Consultants, which has been reviewing the project and offering recommendations to the county.
The new system is expected to be fully installed by September
2015.
KIRO
