America's Talking - Illinois agency buys incompatible computer system meant to 'streamline' DEI efforts

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

(The Center Square) The number of businesses owned by racial minorities and women that are certified by Illinois plummeted in the past year, partly due to a new computer system the state bought for as much as $750,000 and was designed to help boost the number, an investigation by The Center Square found. In an annual report this year to lawmakers, the Commission on Equity and Inclusion cited its new supplier diversity management portal as one of its main accomplishments, noting that it would enhance the commission's work by "streamlining processes." Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxx Read more: http://thecentersquare.com/illinois/article_1d388202-7dda-4687-a573-d94e12f1554c.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My name's Art Kane. I'm Investigations Managing Editor at the Center Square, and this is America's Talking. I'm here with Jared Strong, one of our investigative reporters, and he's continuing to dig into the Illinois Equity Commission, which is having a lot of issues getting government contracts for minorities, which is their job. Now apparently their computer isn't communicating with other agencies, which is also causing problems. Jared, what's the latest on the agency? and what have you found? Yeah, so if you'll recall from our previous reporting, the Illinois Commission on Equity and Inclusion formed in 2022 with the goal of increasing certain businesses' access to state government contracts. These are businesses that are owned by irrational minorities, women, and people who are disabled.

And so almost immediately after the commission formed, it started seeking bids for a new computer system to streamline their processes. And after many months of testing, they rolled this out in the middle of last year. And since then, their numbers have dropped. One of their goals is to certify these businesses so that they're available and on the radar for these government contracts. They're given assistance in navigating the contract process. And so they reached a peak of about 5,400.

of those businesses, and now that number sits at 2,900. So it's almost dropped by half. And part of the problem is that this new computer system that they got does not communicate with the similar computer systems operated by partnering agencies. The city of Chicago is one of them. The state's Department of Transportation is another. And so if those businesses are certified by one of those other agencies, that that certification is not automatically transferred to this new state government system,

which has been very difficult for these businesses to navigate and has been part of the cause for this precipitous drop in the number of certified businesses. So basically, this computer system, brand new computer system that they bought, is hindering their ability to do their job. The old system seemed to work. What was the reason to replace it? Well, I don't know that for sure because the commission, as has been its practice in recent weeks and months, does not respond to my request for comment. The only difference that I can glean other than, you know, the fact that they must operate somewhat differently is that the new system is considerably cheaper.

It is about a third of the cost of the system that they were using before. and it is also provided by or operated by one of these businesses that are targeted by the state to increase the number of government contracts too, whereas the other two businesses that supply bids, including the pre-existing provider, are not certified businesses and actually are located out of state. So basically they got one minority or women contract from getting this computer system that doesn't work. But in the meantime, they cut basically in half the amount of contracts they can get for other minorities and women.

Seems like a pretty bad deal for the contractors, bad deal for taxpayers. If people hadn't seen the first story, tell people a little bit about this agency and what kind of spending is happening there that you uncovered in previous investigations. So with the creation of the commission, there are seven commissioners that, lead the policy end of it. And they are fairly highly paid. They make at least $150,000 a year. I've been unable to tell how much time they spend doing commission work.

They are allowed to have jobs outside of these government roles. They attend monthly commission meetings that are scheduled to last about two hours. Some of them last far less than that. But so, so there's this commission, seven commissioners, and then they also have a staff of at least 30 people. It's been growing each year. Also with fairly highly paid folks, too, at the top, they've got someone making $150,000 a year. And the average salary for all of the employees is, I think, just shy of $100,000. And then you found that despite this new commission,

they were supposed to increase minority contracts and women-owned contracts. Actually, once the commission was in place, it was actually doing worse than the previous organization that didn't have all these kind of big dollar salaries. That's right, yes, at least on paper. Again, the commission has not talked to me about this, about what sort of progress they're making. The actual absolute dollars that are being spent with these businesses have increased, but they've also identified state projects that more of them that should be eligible for these businesses.

And so the increase in the amount of dollars that is available has not kept pace with the actual increase of the awards. So whereas the previous State Department that was in charge of overseeing this stuff before, they routinely reported meeting their goals year to year. Now, with a goal of 30%, the commission is at about 4%. Wow. So government spends more money, and whether you agree with giving contracts to minorities and women outside of the normal process, they end up doing worse than they can, and then the commission doesn't want to talk to you about it.

Is your sense that they just can't justify it? or they don't feel like talking is, is, is, is how can I help them? What, what's your sense and why this is probably what the third or fourth story you've written, why they didn't want their side out of it? Yeah, I'm not sure. I mean, part of it could be that they just don't have an answer. I mean, this problem, this issue with the computer has been going on for, you know, a year and some change now.

And it sounds like they're no closer to a solution now than they were, perhaps when they first discovered it. And again, I'm not sure exactly when that was. I don't know how long that they've known that the problem existed in the first place. Well, that's great. It sounds like you have a lot of stuff to dig into with this commission and probably other places in Illinois and in your coverage area. Jared, thanks for joining us on America's Talking and read a story on thecentersquare.com. Thank you.