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City Lawyer: Assessment Software Doesn't Exist
BRT Doesn't Store Property Data on Hard Disk
By Ed Goppelt
Wednesday, 05/14/03
(1052912044600)
City Lawyer Mimi Choksi played the FUD card in Court yesterday, telling
Judge Esther Sylvester that
it would be very difficult for the City's Board
of Revision of Taxes (BRT) to copy data
from its mainframe computer system
to a CD.
I sued the BRT to compel the release of the software it uses to calculate Philadelphian's real estate tax assessments (Read more about the BRT suit here). After listening patiently to both sides and asking a few questions, the Judge took the matter under advisement.
FUD, short for "Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt", has a long history in the computer world. Corporations such as IBM and Microsoft regularly employ FUD to shut out competitors, justify high prices and excuse lousy performance.
FUD assumes that no one other than an employee of a large corporation or City government can make reliable judgements about computer issues, such as whether one is being overcharged or whether the BRT can easily copy mainframe data to CD.
Boiled down to its essentials, the FUD argument goes like this: "Computers are complicated, expensive and hard to understand. You better not [switch to our competitor's product/ask for City data on CD] (choose one) because bad things will happen and [you will be fired/the City will go broke] (choose one)."
Here are the highlights of what Ms. Choksi told the Judge yesterday about the City's computer systems:
About where the BRT stores its data files. This became an issue because Ms. Choksi argued that even though the data appears on the BRT's web site, it isn't stored on disk. Therefore, the City could not be reasonably expected to supply me with something it didn't have.
"The reason it is not stored on a disk is that the information is constantly changing; it doesn't make sense to have it on a hard disk."
This is rubbish of the first degree, of course. Hard disks store large amounts of data which can then be retrieved and changed very quickly. This is what they are designed to do. Everytime someone edits a Microsoft Word file or retrieves an email data on their hard disk is being changed--quickly, efficiently and reliably.
On the reliability of the affidavits Hallwatch submitted on the disk issue. Four local computer professionals wrote that, in their professional judgement, the BRT had to be storing its data on computer disk and that the time and effort required of the BRT to retrieve the data was trivial, a matter of minutes.
"Complete strangers can't have a better understanding than the BRT and its consultants. No one understands the City's computer systems better than the City."
Of course the BRT knows more about its computer systems than anyone else. But that doesn't mean that they will necessarily tell the truth about what their computer systems can do!
To anyone familiar with computers, the claim being made the BRT--that they don't store their data on hard disk--is absurd. It's like saying that your car doesn't have an engine. Well, ok, if your car doesn't have an engine, how were you able to drive to work today?
On the non-existence of the BRT's CAMA software
"It's a ridiculous position. It's not a document. It's intangible."
Computer software is no more intangible than the legal briefs Ms. Choksi and her colleagues at the City law Dept. churn out every day. In my experience, source code for computer software can usually be found in two different places: 1) in a text file on the computer used to develop and test the software and 2) in a binder on the desk of the responsible programmer.
In its refusal to face facts, Ms. Choksi's argument reminds me of President Clinton at his most evasive. The President insisted he hadn't lied when he said he hadn't had sex with "that woman, Ms. Lewinksy." Why not? Because, the President argued, he understood sex to mean intercourse, not the blow jobs he received from Ms. Lewinsky.
The BRT employs 10 full time programmers and would like to hire four more. Progammers program which is another way of saying they write source code. What are these programmers working for the BRT doing all day? Sitting on their thumbs?
By law the BRT's 45 residential assessors must determine the value of each of the City's 450,000 residences every year. That works out to 10,000 properties per assessor. Ms. Choksi did not explain how it is possible for so few people to do so much work if in fact there is "no such thing" as the CAMA software to help them. CAMA software is used by other large cities, but apparently not by Philadelphia, to calculate residential assessments.
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