Director Chiu said that Item #3a was to let the Commission know that DBI staff would be working on the next fiscal year’s budget as this always starts in November or December.  Director Chiu asked that the Commissioners take a look at the Efficiency Plan attached with Item #3b to take a look at the Department’s goals and plans for the next two or three years to see if there was any other program that the Commission might want to initiate that would have any impact on the budget.  Director Chiu said that sometime in December the staff would probably be bringing a draft of a budget to the Commission for their review.  Director Chiu asked for any questions.  President Fillon asked if Director Chiu was going to go over the Efficiency Plan line item by line item.  Director Chiu said that at the last meeting it was reported that this Efficiency Plan was being forwarded to the Mayor’s Office and since there were no changes from the Mayor’s Office it was actually forwarded to the Board of Supervisors. 

Public Comment:  The BIC will take public comment on matters within the Commission’s jurisdiction that are not part of this agenda

Mr. Robert Pender introduced himself as Vice-President of the Park Merced Residents Organization.  Mr. Pender stated that Park Merced is the largest private residential community west of the Mississippi River with 3,500 apartments out there.  Mr. Pender said that it seemed like early next year there are going to be some more apartments out there because there is a new company called Mission Valley that has intentions of building approximately 175 apartments down on the Park Merced side of Brotherhood Way.  Mr. Pender said that the reason he was bringing this up was because he and the tenants association want these apartments to be built right.  Mr. Pender passed out a copy of the Park Merced Residents newspaper to all of the Commissioners.  Mr. Pender stated that he was present because this is the first stage of Mission Valley going through the permit process and they would be going to the Planning Department and the Building Department and he wanted the BIC to know what is going on out there. 

Mr. Pender said that there was an item on the agenda about major alterations for residential buildings and asked if he could get a definition of what the Department calls a major alteration.  Mr. Pender asked if he could be sent a written definition that he could show to his landlord.  The Secretary gave Mr. Pender a copy of the handout for that item.  Vice-President Hood said that this had not been adopted yet, but was in the pipeline.  Mr. Pender said that he wanted to tell the Commission that the Park Merced Residents do support the building of these new apartments because the City needs private housing and there is going to be no commercial development.  Mr. Pender said that the association wanted the Residential Builders Association in on this and said that his organization would be looking over the shoulders of the builders of this project.

Discussion and possible action regarding the proposal for revising hiring procedures currently employed by DBI for both Permanent Civil Service and temporary appointments. [John Marquez, Departmental Personnel Officer]

Mr. Marquez said that he was asked at the Commission meeting of July 16, 2003 to look at possibilities and make proposals regarding how DBI could improve its selection and qualification in hiring DBI employees.  Mr. Marquez said he had given the Commission his proposals and stated that he wanted to emphasize that the proposals all fall within the constraints of the Civil Service Commission rules and the City Charter.  Mr. Marquez said that as a Department of the City, DBI is constrained by the Civil Service rules and the Charter in terms of how DBI is authorized and the method by which the Department hires employees.  Mr. Marquez said that the Director of the Department of Human Resources (DHR) governs all hiring procedures.  Mr. Marquez said that he understood that a lot of the motivation in terms of hiring were the concerns of getting referrals for people who were not qualified or had falsified their qualifications, particularly the MIS Manager.  Mr. Marquez said that referral came from a registry and said that clerical staff can also come from registries and there are other classifications that are hired in the Department that are hired on a large basis city-wide, based on practices that have been reserved for the most part to DH.  Mr. Marquez stated that he had narrowed is proposal to those classifications that would be used primarily within the Department of Building Inspection, names the Inspector classes, Building, Electrical, Plumbing and Housing Inspectors.  Mr. Marquez said that the Department has given examinations for a classification on a case-by-case basis where there would be a letter of agreement with DHR, as DBI needs to administer an examination and renew that as necessary.  Mr. Marquez said that some departments have a standing agreement with DHR where DBI would take on this task for Inspectors.  Mr. Marquez said that with the other concerns in getting referrals from the registry he believed that DBI could still go through the same process of verifying qualifications of education and experience; DBI could still test in house to see that people have the job knowledge for those positions.

Mr. Marquez reported that the job of doing examinations is a very labor intensive and time-consuming process and that would be one of his concerns with taking on this task.  Mr. Marquez said that if he were asked to go forward with this proposal he would have to get permission from DHR, get concurrence with that and said that he would need two additional staff, a personnel analyst and a clerical staff person to take on the additional workload.  Mr. Marquez said that he would need funding.  Commissioner Marks asked how many provisional employees does the Department have per year.  Mr. Marquez said that he would guess 40 to 50 employees.  Mr. Marquez stated that right now DHR is giving an examination for Electrical Inspectors and under the Civil Service rules the provisional appointments are limited to a maximum of three years.  Mr. Marquez said that right now DHR is targeting to have a list out by December 2003, which is going to be a very tight timeline.  Mr. Marquez said that right now the Charter prohibits provisional employment beyond that and if employment is extended beyond that point, the Director of Human Resources has to go before the Civil Service Commission and the Board to explain why they are exceeding that standard.  Mr. Marquez said that DHR is experiencing their own layoffs so where they had three examination and classification teams they are now down to one team.  Mr. Marquez said that DHR has announced that they are going to be giving the examination for Senior Engineer and Engineer and those would be for all the disciplines that are used throughout the City.  Commissioner Marks said that going back to the Department, how many provisional Inspectors does the Department hire a year.  Commissioner Marks said that in looking at the salary for this program it would be $135,000 so she didn’t know if it was worth it.

Mr. Marquez said that the return would be that the Department goes through a process twice; if there is no eligible list the Department hires on a provisional basis and on occasion then the Department had to go through and create an examination, come up with another list and go through a second round.  Mr. Marquez said that it has been slow for the past year because there has been almost a freeze on DBI’s hiring.  Mr. Marquez said that at one time he would say that DBI had between 50 – 70 provisional Inspectors in four separate classes.  Mr. Marquez said that it is going through the process twice, first to get the Inspector on board and then to give them permanent status, as there is no guarantee for a provisional employee.  Mr. Marquez said that to give an example the examination teams from DHR would have anywhere from four to six professional staff, personnel analysts, conducting examinations; each of those doing eight examinations so he did not know if he could give a dollar amount on what this would cost.  Mr. Marquez said that his division also had payroll and other personnel responsibilities so something else would suffer or something would have to be put on hold to accomplish the examinations. 

Commissioner Guinnane said that previously he had asked Mr. Marquez how many employees were in his division including himself.  Commissioner Guinnane said that Mr. Marquez answered that it was he and three other employees.  Mr. Marquez said that he must have misunderstood because he was referring to professional staff; there is himself, a Senior Personnel Analyst and a Personnel Analyst.  Mr. Marquez stated that he also has four clerical staff for a total of seven employees in Personnel; a payroll supervisor, personnel technician, a data administrator and a secretary.  Mr. Marquez said that the payroll and the personnel technician have to be cross-trained in order to cover those functions, as he is short-staffed there.  Commissioner Guinnane said in looking at all of the actual spots that are open right now they are not going to be filled in one shot and asked why couldn’t Personnel staff handle this without bringing on additional staff at this time.  Commissioner Guinnane said that he did not know if Personnel staff were overwhelmed or not, but asked if they could take this task on with current staff or maybe just hiring one person.  Mr. Marquez said that if he had to take the choice of taking on one person it would be clerical staff.  Mr. Marquez said that he believed his division could do it as they have done it in the past.  Mr. Marquez said that when the Department went from 185 employees to 285 employees the division was conducting three or four interviews per week and brought in almost double the staff in one year.  Mr. Marquez said that it would be hard, but right now things are slow and stated that he felt that Personnel would have to limit the number of examinations and projected exams.  Mr. Marquez said that the examinations could be staggered out and said that he knew it would be difficult, but said that he would like to have at least one clerical position.  Commissioner Guinnane said that it would be good if this could be done without adding any additional positions, but if it came down to it he would support doing the paperwork to hire another individual.  Commissioner Guinnane said that he still thought that things were still slowing down economy- wise and could not see any influx of additional hiring.

President Fillon asked if there were some other positions in the Department that do not have a heavy workload that could be transferred into Personnel to help out with this.  Mr. Marquez said that he has been lending his Secretary to the operational units such as Central Permit Bureau and in the Director’s Office.  Mr. Marquez stated that there are some vacant positions where the Department has hired staff and has been bringing them on, but it is getting to the point because of salary saving purposes and because of restrictions from the Board of Supervisor’s and the Mayor’s Office that this would have to stop because the Department has to maintain a certain vacancy rate for salary saving purposes.  Mr. Marquez stated that staff could be shuffled around during peak periods and there are a limited number of temporary salaries so temporaries could be hired during those periods.  Mr. Marquez said that he could do this if he needed to, but would hate to do it in such a squeeze.  President Fillon said that it just seemed like a lot of money at this time to fill two positions.  Commissioner Marks said that the Department could still confirm the references as well as do in house testing with the current system so it does seem like there are safeguards to increase the likelihood that there would be a competent person to fill the position and it is just a matter of Personnel doing the additional work.  Vice-President Hood said that she understood using the Civil Service rules that if there is one level and somebody in, for instance, the Health Department is at that same level, they could come in and if they have the seniority, bump off that highly qualified individual and take that position.  Mr. Marquez said that this would be citywide and that would be restricted to like classifications and like status.  Mr. Marquez said that it would most likely happen in the clerical positions because there have been so many clerical people laid off. 

Vice-President Hood said that DBI is subject to the hiring practices of other departments because this happened with the MIS.  Vice-President Hood said that DBI was trying to get higher or more definitive hiring standards.  Commissioner Guinnane said that what prompted this was the MIS Manager because there was a lot of finger pointing when Marcus Armstrong was brought on board at DBI with checking his resume and one department was finger pointing at the other side.  Vice-President Hood said that his resume was never checked.  Mr. Marquez said that DBI had the power to tighten up and scrutinize and Personnel are committed to doing that regardless of whether DBI does the first examination or not.  Vice-President Hood said that then the next person that came in and her references hadn’t been checked.  Mr. Marquez stated that the person was transferred from the Fire Department because he had status rights to come into a vacancy and that person retired.  Commissioner Guinnane said that this issue was not brought up because of the bumping with the Fire Department, but surrounded the Marcus Armstrong issue about being hired at DBI and his resume and his background not being verified by DHR.  Commissioner Guinnane said that DHR said that Mr. Marquez should have done it.  Mr. Marquez said that he agreed and said that he should have done that better. 

Vice-President Hood said that when a new woman came in from another IT Department her resume was not checked and her references were not called and the Department just took her on the say so of the other department and that was the problem with Marcus.  Commissioner Guinnane said that Vice-President Hood was referring to Sue who is now the Acting Manager of MIS and there was some discussion about her resume.  Vice-President Hood said that it has been DBI’s experience that other City departments cannot be relied upon so the Commission wants resumes and references checked out even if a person comes from another City department. Mr. Marquez said that this process would have been out of his jurisdiction.  Mr. Marquez stated that he did get a copy of this person’s resume and transcript and verified it against her resume.  Vice-President Hood asked if Mr. Marquez called the schools to verify this person’s education.  Mr. Marquez stated that he provided that information to the Director.  Vice-President Hood said that Mr. Marquez did not actually verify whether she had a degree or not.  Mr. Marquez said that this person was not actually appointed to the Department of Building Inspection; that was done by the Department of Telecommunications.  Vice-President Hood said this was the same thing and it has to be checked twice because DHR does not call the schools to verify the degrees and so forth, so when somebody comes into DBI the Commission wants that information checked again.  Vice-President Hood said that there has just been this enormous problem with one or two people and then this person comes in and she was also not checked and while it may be that her resume is true and she does have the appropriate knowledge, but the Commission still wants to know if there is any reason why DBI could not have checked her references and her resume.

Director Chiu said that this issue was raised a couple of months ago and Vice-President Hood asked the Director to personally look into this particular issue.  Director Chiu said that when John Marquez supplied him with this person’s resume and education, he personally verified all of it.  Commissioner Guinnane said that this was after the fact.  Vice-President Hood said that she would like to know if John could do this as a policy and as normal procedures.  Vice-President Hood asked if this was part of what Mr. Marquez was now doing.  Mr. Marquez said yes.  Commissioner Guinnane said that Vice-President Hood was concerned because this individual was hired and her references were never checked.  Commissioner Guinnane said that this is why the BIC wants more of this done in house to get a handle on it.  Commissioner Marks said that it is her understanding that the Department can do a second check.  Vice-President Hood said that she wanted more clarification and gave the example of there being a vacant position at DBI for the head of MIS and Mr. Marquez hears that there is somebody available over at Telecommunications who would like to come to DBI.  Vice-President Hood asked if before that person came over, could DBI ask that person to submit to DBI Personnel her resume, her past tests or whatever information is available and an update of her experience in telecommunications.  Mr. Marquez said that yes, he could.  Vice-President Hood asked if those don’t meet what is shown on the resume could the Department, at that point, reject her.  Mr. Marquez said absolutely based on falsification of the application.  President Fillon asked what would happen if an eligible person just did not have the qualifications and it is sort of a gray thing.  Mr. Marquez said that with the MIS it is a very gray thing because a degree is not required and the requisition just says that the person must have an accommodation of experience and education, which will allow a person to manage an MIS unit.  Mr. Marquez said that the way to avoid that would be to have a stringent process and get in experts to aid the Department in determining what criteria and what kind of knowledge a person should have for this level to manage a unit.  Mr. Marquez said that this varies from department to department because, for instance, DBI has an Oracle environment and another department might have a different system.  Vice-President Hood said that the only people who could really judge that are the people who understand those systems and manage them. 

Mr. Marquez said that DBI did go through this when Mr. Armstrong was hired, but he was salient enough to pass that type of an interview.  Vice-President Hood asked how DBI selected the people who were interviewers.  Mr. Marquez stated that DBI went through the Department of Telecommunications and COIT as they are the Department within the City that does this.  Vice-President Hood asked if the Department could have outside experts come in and do this.  Vice-President Hood said that she believed that DBI really needed to get somebody in who is working in that area right now and not in a City department that has an old system.  Vice-President Hood said that she believed that DBI needed to get outside people to evaluate DBI and to set up any new systems.  Commissioner Guinnane said that he would strongly support getting in outside talent and asked Mr. Marquez to move on that right away to get some individuals in place.  Commissioner Guinnane stated that when Mr. Armstrong was put in place it was COIT and DTIS who approved him and said that this is why he doesn’t want to move forward with these MIS issues, as it is the same people again.  Commissioner Guinnane asked what would it take to get hiring an outside consultant approved by the City.  Mr. Marquez asked if this was to actually come in and perform a job.  Commissioner Guinnane said that he wanted an outside consultant to come in and do an evaluation of the MIS, the whole system, and an evaluation of the individuals that are working for the MIS.  Commissioner Guinnane stated that he did not want the Controller’s Office to do the evaluation on the personnel; he wanted an outside company.  Commissioner Guinnane asked what would it take to get somebody approved to do that.  Mr. Marquez said that DBI would have to make that proposal before the Civil Service Commission to be allowed to bring somebody in, give them the scope of duties, and allocate whatever monies it would cost and that would probably be protested by whatever union group might represent MIS people which would more than likely be Local 21 or MEA.  Mr. Marquez said if they protest they would present their argument to the Civil Service Commission and the Commission would listen to the Department in terms of why DBI believes that there is nobody in house, meaning citywide, that could provide that function.  If DBI were given that approval and that authority the Department could then go to outside consultants which is done quite frequently especially on a one-time project basis.  Mr. Marquez said that the other part would be a Request for Proposal (RFP).  Vice-President Hood said that this is a very long process that could take years.  Mr. Marquez said that he could not just go out and unilaterally hire someone.

Vice-President Hood said that she knew that in the City Architect’s Office that sometimes when they have done hiring or promoting people for the higher position they go to outside, private architects who sit on the interview.  Vice-President Hood said that the architects do this pro bono and they choose people who have a similar position in a private firm.  Vice-President Hood said that her experience with that was that it was a very good process because the cream really came to the top.  Commissioner Guinnane said that he wanted to incorporate Vice-President Hood’s comments into Item #6, the MIS issue on the calendar.  Commissioner Guinnane asked Mr. Marquez to stay for that portion of the meeting.  Commissioner Guinnane stated that he did not have any more questions, but asked Mr. Marquez to move forward with trying to do this in house without hiring any staff, but maybe just one person.  Commissioner Marks said that she thought that Mr. Marquez was saying that even if someone is hired in house there is still potentially the same problem so Vice-President Hood’s suggestion of including an expert on the interview panel is the way to go.  Mr. Marquez said that is a common practice.  Vice-President Hood said that it would be good to reach out to some very highly qualified outside people in these areas who don’t sell anything that this Department would ever buy.

Mr. Marquez said that he understood his task to be to carry this out without staff until the Department could assess whether additional staff would be needed.  President Fillon said that was correct and if Mr. Marquez decided that additional staff was needed he should come back to the Commission.  President Fillon thanked Mr. Marquez.

Discussion and possible action as requested in Director Chiu’s letter dated October 24, 2003 to the BIC regarding approval of the proposed MIS reorganization. [Director Chiu]

Director Chiu said that this issue was discussed at the October 1^st meeting where he handed out the proposal for reorganization of the MIS.  Director Chiu stated that at that meeting it was decided that this matter be continued.  Director Chiu said that he had written a letter to the Commission explaining why it was important for the Department to move forward, one way or the other and that letter was in today’s meeting package.  Director Chiu said that he wanted to hear from the Commission what they had in mind and said that his letter explained the urgency to move forward since the Mayor’s Office has been supportive of the reorganization and are waiting for DBI’s package to go forward to obtain approval from the Board of Supervisors.  Director Chiu said that because there are so many positions to be classified approval must be obtained from the Board of Supervisors as a supplemental, not asking for more money, but this would be a negative supplemental because this reorganization would reduce DBI’s budget by $300,000 - $400,000.

Commissioner Guinnane said that the MIS has been in a total mess for seven or eight years and now all of a sudden the Director wants to push this reorganization plan through in a big hurry.  Commissioner Guinnane stated that this is very troublesome to him.  Commissioner Guinnane said that there is a temporary Manager in MIS now that is from DTIS and said that he did not know if this person is qualified.  Commissioner Guinnane said that when Marcus Armstrong was hired in DBI the panel was made up of people from DTIS and COIT.  Commissioner Guinnane said that he would like to move forward with the reorganization, but not at this time.  Commissioner Guinnane said that echoing what Commissioner Hood said, he would like to put together a panel, get some talent in to DBI to really do an assessment on the MIS.  Commissioner Guinnane said that he did not want to move forward ten steps and back up seven like has been happening for several years and watching millions of dollars going out the door.  Commissioner Guinnane said that when the system is down it doesn’t seem that MIS can get it back up and running.  Commissioner Guinnane stated that he heard the system had been down the previous Friday and that the Manager could not get it back up and going.  Commissioner Guinnane said that he knew that MIS was short of staff, but said he would not support the reorganization today and would like to put a panel in place and come up with some guidelines and get some people who are really talented in this profession because he is not.  Commissioner Guinnane said he had given the reorganization plan to an outside individual to look at it and was waiting for an answer back.  Commissioner Guinnane said that the people that were in MIS were all reclassified as approved by the Director and were making huge salaries that were probably twice what they were worth.  Director Chiu said that just because the Commission would take a vote to approve the reorganization that doesn’t mean that the Commission is giving permission to hire people; it would just say that the Commission agrees with the classifications.  Director Chiu said that then approval could be gotten from the Mayor’s Office and the Board of Supervisors and then when the Department is ready to recruit that would be another story.  Director Chiu said that this would be when the Department could incorporate the Commission’s issues and concerns.  Commissioner Guinnane said that he had concerns because Director Chiu was being really aggressive with this reorganization and what happened five years ago or three years ago.  Vice-President Hood said that in reading Director Chiu’s letter she understood that the City is coming to the end of a two-term Mayor and there will be a new Mayor at the first of the year; if the Department gets the money approved to do the improvements, but don’t exactly know how it is going to be done yet, then at least whoever is on this Commission in the future could have the benefits of what this Commission has found out over the years.  Vice-President Hood said that she would vote to set aside funds and then to develop a program of all the things that the BIC has been talking about.  Vice-President Hood said that if the Department had to wait for a new Mayor and possibly a new Commission then there would be a new learning curve again.  Commissioner Guinnane said that with the Commission he planned to be on it next year and for future years as the Mayor should have no bearing on this.  Commissioner Guinnane asked how the Commission could ask for money to be set aside before it really knows what it wants to do. 

Vice-President Hood said that she thought that there was going to be a new program for the Department and in order to do that the Commission was going to ask a couple of experts on a pro bono basis to suggest what needs to be done.  Vice-President Hood said that then based on that John Marquez and the Human Resources Department could set up procedures for interviewing people who have the experience and technical expertise that the Department does not have the benefit of right now.  Vice-President Hood said that she thought that this would take some time, and said that she thought that Director Chiu was saying that the current Mayor is ready to move on this issue because he is familiar with the background. 

Director Chiu said that he first wanted to respond to Commissioner Guinnane about what the hurry is.  Director Chiu said that he thought that Commissioner Guinnane was the one who asked him to take charge regardless because he is ultimately responsible for MIS.  Director Chiu said that the Department has made mistakes and said that at Commissioner Guinnane’s request he looked at the entire organization and reported back to the BIC Committee on MIS.  Director Chiu said he shared the detailed report of what needs to be done and also admitted that the entire MIS operation is a mess and that the entire MIS staff were not doing what they were hired to do.  Director Chiu said that this is what he understood the Commission wanted and said he had done all that was asked and at this time if the Commission thinks that the Department should back off and get other information then that is fine, but he thought that he was just following the Committee’s recommendation.  Commissioner Guinnane said that the Commission got on the MIS issue because there are millions that have been spent and the Director was told to bring in somebody to evaluate the MIS issues.  Commissioner Guinnane said that all of a sudden the Manager is gone, Commissioner Guinnane said he met with the Director, and all of a sudden there is a new Manager in place.  Commissioner Guinnane said that then Commissioner Hood asked the Director if he had her resume and the answer was no.  Commissioner Guinnane said that he did not understand how the Director could put a Manager in place without even having her resume.  Commissioner Guinnane said that this was going backwards again and that is why he could not support this plan.  Commissioner Guinnane stated that he was not comfortable with the Department bringing in all these DTIS people.  Director Chiu said that he and Commissioner Guinnane had a private conversation as to why this was done and said that publicly he did not think he should talk about it.  Director Chiu said that if Commissioner Guinnane as chair of the Committee for MIS was not ready to move forward he had a lot of respect for Commissioner Guinnane’s decision.  Commissioner Guinnane said that he was ready to move forward once the right talent was in place.  Director Chiu said that this proposal was not talking about talent, but was just about classifications and positions only.  Director Chiu said that after this was accepted there was still time to put in the people, procedures and security that the Commission wants.  Director Chiu said that he thought Commissioner Guinnane was saying that he was not ready to move forward with just approving the positions outlined in the reorganization.  Commissioner Guinnane said he could not see why there was such a big push on this right now.  Vice-President Hood said that it needs to be done and said that she did not agree with Commissioner Guinnane’s statement that this was just coming up suddenly as the BIC has been talking about this since last spring. 

Vice-President Hood said that there were temporary people in the MIS slots right now and all of the Commission agrees that those are not the permanent people, but the Commission will know it when they see it so they should move ahead with the reclassification as well as all of the things that Mr. Marquez talked about today.  Commissioner Guinnane said that John’s stuff is completely different than this issue because the MIS is a completely different kettle of fish.

President Fillon asked if this proposal got approved and the Commission and the Department worked together to do a parallel review could changes then be made to the reorganization plan.  Director Chiu said that there could be some changes, but he did not want to change the whole classification proposal because then the process would have to be started all over again and go back before the Board of Supervisors.  Director Chiu said that it would not be a problem to upgrade or downgrade one or two positions.  President Fillon asked if the structure of the proposal could be changed because on the face of it the proposal looks a lot more efficient than what the Department currently has which is just a mess, but it is just numbers. 

Vice-President Hood asked about the monies being paid to DTIS.  Director Chiu said that because DBI currently has no Manager the Department is paying DTIS to help out in the meantime.  Director Chiu said that DBI has to work within the confines of DHR and go through the Civil Service recommendations.  Director Chiu said that one thing that the Department has to be mindful of is that as soon as it is decided that these positions are available and if there is a layoff, the Department might inherit someone through the Civil Service regulations.  Director Chiu said that it is like a chess game because there is no guarantee that the Department could recruit all brand new people.

Commissioner Guinnane asked when the Acting Manager came to DBI.  Director Chiu said that he believed it was sometime around April and said that initially she was brought in to do an analysis.  Director Chiu said that she was to come in for three months to study the organization and come back with recommendations.  Director Chiu said that this Acting Manager made the recommendations in this proposal and Director Chiu said that he also spoke with the Acting Manager’s supervisor at DTIS and agreed that this was the way to go.  Commissioner Guinnane asked if this person would have any conflicts since she made up the recommendations and now she is the Acting Manager.  Commissioner Guinnane asked that suppose the Commission approved this and six months down the road wants to change Managers if there would be any problems.  Director Chiu said that there would be no problem because this person is on loan from DTIS and is being paid through a work order and is not really a DBI employee.

Vice-President Hood said that there needs to be somebody managing this everyday and the theoretical person who sets up the local area network that can then tie into other networks and so on.  Vice-President Hood said that there is the technical person and the management person and hopefully those talents could even be found in the same person, but Vice-President Hood said that when she looks at the numbers presented in boxes, she doesn’t have a clue what it means.  Director Chiu said that at the October 1^st meeting the Commissioners were given the attachments that explained all of this.  Commissioner Guinnane said that he thought that Commissioner Hood wanted to know what the positions were and what the salary ranges were for those positions.   Director Chiu said that the salaries were given on page five for the different classifications. 

Director Chiu said that he would summarize the proposal.  Director Chiu stated that under the current organization there is a 1071 Manager and underneath that there are three 1054 programmers that actually do the programming or the software; then on the right side the 1044 network operation those are the people that are supposed to do the hardware replacement and upgrades.  Vice-President Hood asked if a 1053 and the salary had been verified as being sufficient to actually get the applications.  Director Chiu said that the Department has been spending more money on programming, even for small internal programming, in the past these had been contracted out and it took a long time to get them back.  Director Chiu said that as a result people were taken from the network side and the networking people were shifted more to the programming so that DBI’s internal customers could be better served.  Director Chiu said that in the past there were three highly paid 1054 programmers who are supposed to be at a supervisory level, but now the proposal is saying that only one highly paid programmer is needed and 1053s should be sufficient to do all of the programming that the Department needs.  President Fillon said that the Commission has been through this before and stated that he would not mind continuing this item until the next meeting so that everybody could look at the proposal. 

Vice-President Hood said that she would agree with continuing this.  Director Chiu said that if it was continued the Department was going to miss the deadline for this to be presented to the Board of Supervisors.  Commissioner Guinnane asked what was going to be missed, as there is $1.6M set aside.  Director Chiu said that it was not the money, but it is just the request that the current Mayor was going to send with a package to the Board of Supervisors.  President Fillon asked when that was going to happen.  Director Chiu said that the Mayor’s Office is ready right now and was just waiting for DBI.  Director Chiu said that by not going forward with this now the Department would just lose some more time, but if the Commission felt that this was not important that was fine.  Vice-President Hood said that if this were held up it probably would not get approved until July.  Commissioner Guinnane said that he did not think that the committee was going to rush into anything and said that he did not think that the Department was going to miss anything.   Vice-President Hood said that she did not agree because it seemed to her that once the Department had the new proposal in place it looked to her that it would work better than the old organization.  Vice-President Hood said that she thought that the Department did not need to have so many 1054s, but just one terrific 1054.  Commissioner Guinnane asked how Commissioner Hood could say that if she didn’t really know the inner workings of the DBI and stated that he as not saying that the new proposal did not look a lot better, but thought that it could be fine-tuned to look even better.  Vice-President Hood stated that this was just the overall umbrella and it could still be fine-tuned.  Commissioner Guinnane said that his concern was that this proposal came from the MIS Manager that is in place right now and no expert from the outside has had a chance to look at it to make suggestions.

Commissioner Guinnane said that he wanted to do an evaluation on the system itself to make it competent and then put the slots in place for the individuals to run it and take care of it.  Commissioner Guinnane said that he wanted a vision on down the road for ten years.  Director Chiu said that he thought Commissioner Guinnane was saying that he wanted DBI to go to DHR to allow the Department to have a consultant come in and do an analysis.  Director Chiu said that John Marquez had already explained that process.  Commissioner Guinnane said that he wanted somebody to come in from outside the City because of what happened with the hiring of the previous Manager when DTIS and COIT were sitting on the interviewing panel and there is a big scandal going on there.  Commissioner Guinnane said that he was only concerned about the Building Department and wanted it to work right once and for all.  Vice-President Hood said that if it is not set up right in the beginning it would never work right.  Commissioner Guinnane said that the Commission did not have the expertise and said that he would like to get a couple of individuals that are very knowledgeable about this and pick their brains as nobody on the outside has looked at this other than City vendors such as DTIS.  Commissioner Guinnane said that he had a real concern with DTIS wanting to bring in all their own people. Commissioner Santos asked if Commissioner Guinnane was concerned about the procedure that the Department would have to follow to engage an outside consultant because of timing.  Commissioner Guinnane said that he was not concerned about the timing and if the Mayor changes, so what everything else still goes on.  Commissioner Guinnane said that he would like to get some heads together and try to get some outside individuals to give advice.  Vice-President Hood said that there could be a meeting where three computer experts could be called in that the Commissioners might know from their outside experience, such as somebody with a degree in computer science.  Vice-President Hood said that the Department could be described to these people very quickly and they could tell what the Department needs just as Commissioner Santos could tell someone what they need in an engineering project or President Fillon could tell them with an architectural project.  Commissioner Santos asked Vice-President Hood when she thought this should happen and should the BIC approve Director Chiu’s proposal now or wait until hearing from experts.  Vice-President Hood said that she had been talked into Commissioner Guinnane’s concerns that the Commission does not know what the flow charts and management charts mean.  Vice-President Hood said that the experts should be brought in before any proposal is approved by anyone.  Commissioner Santos asked who would select these individuals who would advise the Department.  Commissioner Guinnane said that he thought it should be the Commission.  Vice-President Hood stated that she could come up with a couple of people who could help with this issue. 

Commissioner Guinnane said that whoever would come in would have to look at DBI itself and look at the system that is in place and the inner workings of the whole system to see if it is outdated or what.  Commissioner Guinnane said that if the Department is going to move forward it needs to be as a full force not leaving half of it behind.  Commissioner Guinnane stated that if two people are going to come in and look at the organizational chart, that’s fine, but get two or four other individuals to come in and look at the function of DBI on the computer system itself to evaluate that.  Commissioner Guinnane said that this should be one complete package that would enable the Department to move forward.  Vice-President Hood said that this would be implementation and she was talking about decisions.  Commissioner Guinnane said that the Department could get somebody in to look at the system and tell what the problems are and then at that point the Commission could move forward to try and retain somebody.  Vice-President Hood said that the decision people would suggest the kind of person needed to get things solved.  Commissioner Guinnane said that when the current system is down the people in the MIS can’t seem to get it back up and going again and have to bring in outside people. 

President Fillon said that the Commission is really talking about three different levels of analysis; one is to take the proposed reorganization chart and sit down at an MIS Committee meeting with some guest experts to go over it and analyze it and have them tell the Committee what they think. President Fillon said that is a real easy one, but another one is to have someone look at DBI itself and its needs and all that and give a limited idea of the vision which is not too much more difficult and could still be pro bono.  President Fillon stated that the other one is to do a complete analysis of the actual workings of the Department and a needs assessment and that would need a RFP and would be a six-month project.  Vice-President Hood said that on the first level it would be somebody who was really involved in managing information technology in a company that has to turn out a lot of stuff quickly and that person would determine if they were setting up a company what kind of people they would need for a company that had 300 people working and turning out 51,000 permits per year and so on.  Vice-President Hood said that this person would tell the Department what kind of system it wanted to have today to do that.  Vice-President Hood said that the next level would be to write that up in greater detail, but when the Department would know what kind of people would be needed in those slots then those people should be able to do the rest of it.  Vice-President Hood stated that the Department only needed to determine the first two levels and then it would have the people who could carry it out.  President Fillon asked if Vice-President Hood was saying to fill these positions and then those employees would do the work.  Commissioner Guinnane said that there would still be problems.  Vice-President Hood said that the people she knows that have the highest grade of technological systems have people in the office writing software on a daily basis to keep it running.  President Fillon said that the Commission had to keep in mind what it has control over.  President Fillon said that the Commission has control over the positions in MIS and how it is organized, but the BIC does not have control over the quality of the people who eventually fill those positions.  Vice-President Hood said that she wanted to get a set of job descriptions from these people to say whether the job description gets the right type of person.  President Fillon said that with a lot of the MIS positions a lot of times the person does not even need a degree.  President Fillon said that it is different with City employment practices and in the private sector; the employer can interview a lot of people and hire the Bill Gates, but with the City if a person qualifies for a 1053 that is who you get.  President Fillon said that the Director is saying that the Department needs to move forward with something or DBI is going to miss the boat with the outgoing Mayor and that is one issue; the second issue is whether or not DBI and the BIC can make changes to that later if the Commission does research and finds that the reorganization is not adequate to deal with the needs of the Department.  Director Chiu said that it could be amended at any time.  Commissioner Guinnane said that the Director stated a little while ago that it could be changed a little bit, but it could not be a major change.  Director Chiu said that he was saying that perhaps three classifications could be changed without having to go back to the Board, but if the BIC felt that after hiring the outside consultants and going through the DHR and RFP process the reorganization was totally wrong then the process would have to start all over again.  President Fillon said that logically it makes sense to go ahead and approve this because if the Commission decides later on that they don’t like the reorganization it will be in the same boat as if it is not approved.  Vice-President Hood said that she did not think that was true as it was probably true that for network operations the Department did not need five people.

Commissioner Guinnane said that he did not know under what class all of the individuals in MIS came into DBI, but they were all changed and they all got more money.  Commissioner Guinnane stated that he did not know anything about the employee’s competency, but from what he could see they were all overpaid for what they really knew.  Vice-President Hood said that the people that DBI had did not meet the qualifications so the Commission’s experience historically doesn’t tell whether the organizational chart worked or not because the MIS was never properly staffed. Director Chiu said that just because the Commission could approve the reorganization it does not mean that he could go out and hire people tomorrow.  Vice-President Hood said that with the new organizational chart the Department has a lot less money to go out and hire people and stated that she did not know if the Department would be better off or not.  Vice-President Hood said that she had come around to feeling that she would not be in favor of acting on the reorganization.  Vice-President Hood said she wanted to talk about it more.  President Fillon said that he wanted to have a special meeting to meet with some of these experts before the next meeting and asked if it could be done in a week.  Commissioner Guinnane said that he thought it could be done as long as the meeting was strictly on this issue.  Vice-President Hood said that she would be happy to meet on this.  President Fillon asked if there had to be a full Commission meeting to allow Director Chiu to move forward with this.  Director Chiu said that he would need approval from the Commission in order to move forward with the Board of Supervisors.  President Fillon said that he wanted the meeting to be at the end of the coming week.  Commissioner Guinnane said that the Commissioners would have to come up with the experts first because if they were not available it would be a waste of time.  Director Chiu said that he was perfectly okay with whatever the Commission wanted to move forward with.  President Fillon said that he thought there was a time constraint on this.  Vice-President Hood said that she needed to know what the Commission was trying to do.  President Fillon said that he was totally confident that the Commission could get some people together to have an informal meeting about this issue early next week and said that he had no doubts that the Commissioners could get three people.  Vice-President Hood said that she did not want to meet with vendors.  Commissioner Guinnane stated that he did not want to meet with anyone affiliated with the City.

Secretary Ann Aherne asked if this was going to be an MIS Committee meeting.  President Fillon said that it would be a Committee meeting and not a full Commission meeting.  Vice-President Hood said that a special meeting would require different noticing.  President Fillon stated that he would prefer to just have a Committee meeting and then make a recommendation to the full Commission at the next meeting.  Vice-President Hood asked who was on the MIS Committee.  Secretary Aherne stated that President Fillon and Commissioner Guinnane were on that committee and one more Commissioner could attend as long as there was not a majority of four.  Secretary Aherne asked who was going to get the experts and would she know who was going to attend the meeting.  President Fillon said that he would get the names of the experts to the Secretary by Friday.  Secretary Aherne asked when the meeting would be.  It was decided that the meeting would be held on Thursday at 10:00 a.m. on the sixth floor at DBI.  President Fillon asked for any public comment on this item.

Review of Communication Items.  At this time, the Commission may discuss or take possible action to respond to communication items received since the last meeting..

Memorandum dated October 24, 2003 from Director Frank Chiu DBI Management forwarding Department of Human Resources Memorandum DHR No. 27-03 regarding Notice Concerning Authority to Hire and Terms and Conditions of Employment.

There were no comments on the Communication Items.

Review and approval of the minutes of the October 1, 2003 meeting.

Commissioner Guinnane made a motion, seconded by Commissioner Santos that the minutes be approved.  The motion carried unanimously.

RESOLUTION NO. BIC 045-03