Maloney questions Motorola's role, liability, and contract enforcement
Maloney asks what role or liability Motorola has and what enforcement mechanisms exist. Gelobter says it's premature to ascribe specific responsibility before the root cause analysis. She confirms OTI manages the vendor, both OTI and Motorola track metrics, and the contract includes terms about contractor responsibilities and consequences for deficiencies.
I worked in the technology sector before my role in city council, and before any major software rollout, we would test it in a test environment.
We would have pre-identified metrics that we were tracking to alert us right away whenever there was a delta from the norm, and this was 24-hour-a-day tracking, and we weren't doing emergency services.
So in this case, where the bar or the impact is so much higher, what can we do to better invest in a testing protocol?
When those issues are identified, as it sounds like was in this case, why proceed with a full rollout?
And then why need to be notified by the NYPD or the customer, if you would, telling you when a system isn't working rather than internal metrics that could identify a system error or a bug that's occurred.
Yes, thank you, Council Member, for those questions.
I agree.
I think the answer is there are testing protocols in place.
It went through the validations.
It was run through in the lab, and there was testing done during the rollout, and it did not catch the issue.
So that is where we need to go.
go through and shore up the protocols, the analytics that we look at, the testing from soup to nuts, all the way through to the call recording testing.
That sounds great.
And what role or liability does Motorola have in all this, if there's any information
you know, enforcement that we have to ensure that their software isn't producing these kinds of issues?
Yeah, thank you for the question.
Until we have all the facts and we have completed the root cause analysis, it would be premature to ascribe specific responsibility and blame.
What I can tell you that we do know today is that this system
was not prioritized with the former administration.
It needs a full assessment.
Motorola did perform the firmware upgrade that triggered the issue.
They were not aware that it broke.
It took time for OTI to find and diagnose the problem and reroute the calls.
Because it's a complex system, it's really important that we look at all the contributing factors in minute detail.
And I can guarantee you that we are going to use every shred of what we learn to make improvements and put more safeguards into place to prevent this type of issue from recurring.
And in the meanwhile, we have also put precautions and extra precautions into place while the investigation is ongoing.