MATRIX got Leavitt boost

Former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt not only signed up Utah for the controversial supercomputer database known as MATRIX without telling lawmakers or the public in advance. But he and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — brother of the president — were the top cheerleaders for the project, lobbying the nation's other 48 governors on the virtues of MATRIX as a crime-fighting tool.

And he had plenty of help from Utah officials.

Leavitt's involvement is revealed in documents obtained through the Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA) by governmental watchdog Steve Erickson with the Citizens Education Project.

The documents reveal state technology and public safety employees were volunteering their expertise almost a year prior to the state's official participation, even inviting MATRIX to Utah to showcase how "Utah could be used to show some early successes for the project," wrote Roland Squire with the Utah Department of Public Safety.

"Utah would be happy to help with the MATRIX project in any way we can," he wrote in another e-mail to MATRIX officials.

Said Erickson, "This information contradicts the state's characterization of its participation as minimal and somewhat noncommittal, that it was nothing more than a pilot project.

"These documents make it very clear that Utah was in on it early and aggressively," he added.

The documents include correspondence back and forth between Utah officials and those putting MATRIX together, sales materials used to tout the aprogram's capabilities and persuade states to sign up for the program, and minutes of meetings held between MATRIX officials and the participating states.

One Utah strength exploited by MATRIX was the state's award-winning Web site, which is operated by a private contractor and was seen as a model for secure information. Wrote one MATRIX official in April 2003, "We have been discussing the suggestion . . . to have Utah take the lead in developing a framework for the secure Web component of MATRIX and think this is a very good idea."

A month later, Utah was ready with its prototype "that would interface with Florida and could be expanded out to include other systems as they become connected," wrote one MATRIX official.

The documents reveal Utah was second only to Florida in the development of MATRIX protocols and persuading other states to sign on. Furthermore, Doug Bodrero, the former commissioner of public safety in Utah, now heads the Institute for Intergovernmental Research, the nonprofit entity that funds MATRIX through federal grants.