Justin A. Hinkley

Lansing State Journal

LANSING - Michigan state government's technology department could not say whether projects were on time, on budget or met expectations because it had not fully implemented a project management tool, state auditors said in a report released Friday.

Officials with the state Department of Technology, Management & Budget said they agreed with the auditors' findings and had already made several improvements to the system, including forming quality assurance teams, training employees on how to log project progress, and requiring employees to track budget data in the progress log.

The Michigan Auditor General said the weaknesses it identified happened because, despite an outside consultant's recommendations in 2012, DTMB had not fully centralized oversight of technology projects and a team that had monitored technology efforts for timeliness had disbanded "because of competing priorities." Auditors noted that, as of June, a third of DTMB's project manager positions were vacant.

The audit comes as the state deals with numerous technology headaches, including a glitchy automated system at the Unemployment Insurance Agency that erroneously accused thousands of Michiganders of fraud, and as Gov. Rick Snyder requests tens of millions of dollars in technology spending for the budget year that begins Oct. 1.