Pittsburgh planning to spend millions on computer system upgrades

Pittsburgh’s aging computer network last week caused a series of slowdowns and connection problems for city employees, officials said.

Pittsburgh City Council members and employees have complained for years about system glitches. Mayor Bill Peduto earmarked $1.5 million in this year’s capital budget for upgrades and plans to allocate another $1.5 million in 2021.

“We have an antiquated network,” Peduto said. “It’s not a matter of a computer or one department. It’s a matter of the whole network and not having the capacity to do what is necessary.”

Innovation and Performance Director Santiago Garces said employees in the departments of Human Relations, Public Safety and Public Works, and in City Council, began experiencing problems Thursday. The system was running slow in some cases and people could not connect to the system or printers at other times, he said.

Officials said the problems did not impact the public or public safety.

“Basically some users in some of the departments were experiencing connectivity issues,” Garces said. “We identified the issues, and we contained the problem. Those issues were managed by Friday, and then Monday they reappeared, but we were able to contain them within an hour of us being aware that the issues persisted.”

He blamed the problems on the old system.

“Similar to other forms of infrastructure, the computer networks that support the operation of the city require continuous investment and to be upgraded — the cabling, the devices — and with the financial issues that the city has had in the past that hasn’t always happened the way that it should have,” he said.

Peduto said the city has long-range plans to upgrade the entire system but must do it in phases because of financial constraints. A complete fix would cost “upwards of $20 million,” according to the mayor’s Chief of Staff Dan Gilman.

“We’re putting Band-Aids on it and have been for the past couple of years as we’re investing each year into a new system,” the mayor said. “It’s too big of a price to take on all at once.”