Who can assign a value to the services that the government should be unnecessary to provide, as individuals should be fully capable of taking care of these tasks themselves? Well, the answer is New York state, of course.
That astronomical sum comes in at a whopping $64 million, if you can believe it.
This exorbitant figure represents the estimated cost of the Excelsior Pass, a mobile application concocted by Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The app allowed individuals to store a digital version of their immunization record on their smartphones, eliminating the need to keep a digital photo or a physical copy in their wallet. Who has the time or energy to keep track of a small, folding card when you can simply take a picture of it and find it later on your phone? This costly app, which sees little to no use these days, is now on its way to officially becoming obsolete. With the worst of the pandemic behind us and no imminent need to present vaccination credentials, the state will no longer support the Excelsior Pass after July 28.
To be fair, the state claims that 11.5 million people, equivalent to over half of New York’s population, have downloaded the app since its announcement in early 2021. The Cuomo administration marketed it as a tool for quickly verifying an individual’s COVID-19 vaccination status, promoting it as a step towards returning to normalcy after a year of pandemic-related restrictions. The state stored the records, making them easily retrievable in case of a lost or new phone; users just needed to download the app and log in.
However, despite the app’s current uselessness, the state discovered that the mere act of having IBM store the underlying data cost them a minimum of $200,000 per month, in addition to periodic multimillion-dollar maintenance bills, according to investigations by the Times Union’s Joshua Solomon. And that’s not even including the initial $17 million cost of development, which far exceeded the original $2.5 million estimate. The final price tag remains unknown, as consultants from Deloitte and Boston Consulting Group were also involved.
Perhaps the full narrative of how these costs spiraled out of control will eventually be revealed by the state inspector general, who is conducting a broader examination of $200 million worth of consulting contracts with those same two firms. For now, the state insists that the app wasn’t a complete waste of tens of millions of dollars and that it will yield valuable lessons for future application development.
Well, maybe. But there’s a more pressing and tangible lesson to be learned here: state contracts must undergo more rigorous scrutiny before they are approved. Prior to Governor Cuomo’s persuasive arguments in favor of streamlining executive branch spending, this was the standard practice. The declaration of emergency during the pandemic provided him with even more flexibility to make these deals. After a series of scandals, such as the Buffalo Billion bid rigging, the Legislature and Governor Kathy Hochul reinstated pre-contract review by the state comptroller’s office last year.
It is essential to go even further now. Measures must be taken to ensure reasonable oversight of state contracts even during public emergencies, and a plan should be devised well in advance of the next crisis.
As for the Excelsior Pass, was it a waste? The answer to that, to borrow from a cliché, remains the $64 million question. We eagerly anticipate the inspector general’s potential insights.
Denial of responsibility! VigourTimes is an automatic aggregator of Global media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, and all materials to their authors. For any complaint, please reach us at – [email protected]. We will take necessary action within 24 hours.
