$1.5 Million – The Cost For LA’s Free Email By Google

$1.5 Million – The Cost For LA’s Free Email By Google

Nov 3rd 2009
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This seems like a ludicrous math but Los Angeles’ taxpayers are going to end up paying $1.5 million more next year as the LA City Council heads over to Gmail as a cost-cutting measure.

The City Hall is actually paying out a huge sum as part of a deal with Computer Sciences Corporation to help its employees migrate to the Google services. Apparently, the new system will actually cost more than the cost of maintaining its old legacy system, not less.

As Alex states,

Why, you may ask? It turns out that explaining Gmail to the employees of a city takes something called “training.” At first I was confused, given that Gmail is one of the simplest and most intuitive products ever created.

That must be the problem.

If you had been using Outlook, or god forbid Thunderbird for any period of time, to move to Gmail would be shocking. Where are all the bugs? Where are all the things that must be worked around to get something done? There are none? Quick, I need training.

Novell, which was bidding to take on city email services, looks aberrant: “With the City facing a massive budget deficit, the speculated budget benefits of switching to this untested application are enticing, but as a recent independent Los Angeles City Administrative Officer report has stated, the proposed system under consideration will actually cost taxpayers an additional $1.5 million in the first year. There are significant costs to migrating, training and securing Google Apps.”

But hey, isn’t $1.5 million too much for training people to how to use Gmail? We mean can’t they just head over to the Google Apps Resources for Communications, Training, and Support page and save the millions?