TALLAHASSEE
The company system behind the SunPass debacle last summer “clearly wasn’t good enough,” but most of the problems have been fixed, a Florida Department of Transportation official told lawmakers Wednesday.
“The system was completely overwhelmed,” said Gerry O’Reilly, secretary for the transportation department’s District 4, which covers Broward and Palm Beach counties. “There just wasn’t enough horsepower there to process it all.”
When the state’s electronic tolling system went down in June, the result was chaos, with bills not going out, some customers getting overbilled, and general confusion about how to fix the problems.
State Rep. Mel Ponder, R-Destin, said the contractor, Conduent State & Local Solutions, should have known that it was woefully unequipped to handle the millions of tolls Florida drivers rack up each week.
“This shouldn’t have been a surprise to them, nor should it have been a surprise that their system couldn’t remotely handle it,” Ponder said.
The problem goes back to 2012, when lawmakers asked state transportation commissioners to look at a one-stop shop for the state’s different toll systems, according to O’Reilly. The idea was a single customer service phone number and a single invoice for the state’s tolls, he said.
The Florida Turnpike Enterprise, which led the effort, settled on Conduent, then known as Xerox, which has contracts — and problems — in several other states.
The plan was for Conduent to start processing tolls over the summer last year. The old system would go offline, and Conduent’s system would take over six days later, processing new tolls and the old tolls that were missed during the gap.
But when Conduent’s system took over in June, it couldn’t handle all the transactions. Covering the backlog of tolls over the six days was supposed to take a couple of weeks, O’Reilly said. Instead, it took about 2 1/2 months.
Lawmakers have been hearing from constituents about it ever since. Last week, senators unloaded their grievances on O’Reilly. No one from Conduent has appeared before lawmakers.
“We picked a company that was unqualified to do the work,” Sen. Janet Cruz, D-Tampa said last week. “Isn’t it time that we look for another vendor if Conduent is unable to resolve these issues in a timely fashion?”
O’Reilly said Wednesday that Conduent has not been paid since June, but that’s because the company hasn’t been submitting invoices to be paid. The company submitted its first last week, and FDOT officials are looking it over for accuracy, he said.
Despite all the problems, the most that FDOT could withhold from the company is 25 percent of its bill, based on the contract with the state, O’Reilly said.
But he said the system is working properly and nearly all the bills have gone out.
This story was originally published February 13, 2019 5:32 PM.