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| Costs Mount in Y2K Battle as Clock Keeps Ticking By Marcia Torrey-Jay, Managing Editor Culver City IT Czar John Richo is a man with a mission - making sure that the city's critical technology systems are up and running on New Year's Day in the year 2000. He plans to bring his campaign to city council next Monday night requesting approval of another $2.5 million to fund the overhaul of the finance and human resources modules of the city's information technology systems, to bring them into Y2K compliance. Originally estimated at $1 million, the request is more than double the amount allocated in this fiscal year's city budget for the financial component, driving the overall tab for eliminating the Y2K bug to about $5 million. The systems covered in the request will handle investment tracking, accounts receivable and payable, city payroll, business licenses, general ledger, and project management for the city. The new system will replace the existing systems that are not Y2K compliant and add new functionality required to bring the city fully into the electronic age. "There are no [financial] systems out there," Richo said explaining the $1.5 million increase over the original budget. Richo said that there was one vendor that was supposed to have his system ready but that hadn't happened. "If this were anything but a year 2000 issue, I wouldn't do it," he added. Richo is requesting funding for J.P. Edwards who will provide software, training and consulting; as well as a group of third-party vendors including Deloitte Touche who will provide implementation consulting; Hewlett Packard and Berland for computer hardware, servers and software licenses; a group of other component vendors, data conversion experts and other consultants, suppliers and vendors. Prior to Richo's arrival in 1997 as director of information technology, the city had only an IT manager, along with an antiquated financial management system purchased in 1986; and a human resources system purchased in 1989 which was only partially implemented. (Computer years are sort of like dog years, one equals about seven, making a 1986 computer system about 84 years old.) In addition to those two primary systems, the city has been using a hodgepodge of stand-alone applications and interfaces, some bought from various vendors that may or may not still exist, and some written in-house by folks that may or may not still be there. According to Richo, not only are the primary functions of these systems not Year 2000 compliant, but the various components aren't talking to each other, creating a sort of electronic land of Babel, making it impossible to generate many useful reports, causing wasted staff time, and creating redundancy. Already in the pipeline is an overhaul of the police records systems that "keeps track of the bad guys." The computer-aided dispatch system is due to be completed in August of 1999 at a cost of $750,000. A fire records management system that tracks calls and the resultant actions has been completed, and the city's new refuse management system is also "pretty much a done deal," according to Richo. That system schedules pickups, routes and billing. The next and the final module of the Y2K group of initiatives is a system that will manage the city's fleet maintenance and fuel consumption. Considered critical because it directly affects all police and fire vehicles, as well as city buses and heavy equipment, Richo expects to ask council to approve another $500,000 to $600,000 this December. Year 2000 hasn't been the only headache. Shortly after his arrival Richo discovered that the city's Emergency 911 system was on its last legs. After about a year the system has been completely overhauled at a cost of $610,000, with $250,000 from the city coffers and $360,000 in the form of a grant from the State of California. Currently the city has a task force that has helped to shape the new systems. Headed by David Leuck, technology services manager, the group has representatives from every city department and has looked at each area, one by one. Set up by Richo shortly after his arrival, the Y2K task force has looked at code, embedded chips, and every piece of equipment with a date implementation and made recommendations. There are also Y2K issues surrounding Culver City's communications with other government entities, suppliers and vendors. According to Richo, there's good news and bad news on that front. "The bad news is we haven't done a lot of data exchange electronically, so the good news is we don't have a very big problem there." The new technology will facilitate electronic exchange saving the city time and money up the road, Richo said. "We'll do a lot more of it in the future." Richo himself is a member of a state wide intergovernmental task force of 15 members, two of whom represent LA County and the City of Los Angeles. This select committee's mandate has been to deal with interfaces and electronic exchange guidelines between government entities, Richo said. One of the challenges Richo faces is to separate "fact from fantasy and fear from panic." He says that he focuses on what Y2K isn't. "I doubt if anything physical is going to happen, it's not an earthquake," Richo said. "Unfortunately, this [Y2K] has never happened before so nobody knows for sure what to expect." On the other hand, "something is going to happen," Richo said. "My job is to make sure as little happens as possible." In addition to the Y2K or Year 2000 problem caused by programmers using only two digits rather than four to express dates (i.e. 98 instead of 1998) in order to save costly computer memory, some experts warn that problems and system failures could occur as early as January of next year. Programmers have used the "99" command to mean "throw away" or "end of file," making January 1, 1999 another troublesome date to watch. The next critical date could be September 9th, 1999, which when expressed as four nines - 9999, is another popular programming command that means "end of file." Commenting on the huge amount of information and speculation on Y2K and related issues, Richo says he stays focused on his mandate. "My concern is to deal with Culver City's mission-critical applications," said Richo. I don't know what's going to happen [with the 9 issue] but I doubt if we're going to delete the world. "I can't deal with Europe, I can't deal with Asia, although it may be a fascinating thing watching Y2K move (west) across the globe toward Culver City, but I can't do anything about that," Richo speculates. "Again, my focus is doing what I can right here." Back to the Future with Millennium Bug By Marcia Torrey-Jay, Managing Editor Nobody's happy about it except possibly the COBOL programmers, who until recently were considered the dinosaurs of the computer industry. Now, with the year 2000 problem hanging over everyone's head like Damocles sword, they who created the problem, stand to make megabucks fixing it. And unless it's fixed by the big New Year's Eve party on December 31, 1999, time itself will suffer a hangover of such proportions that it will think it is January 1, 1900. According to John Richo, the city's director of information technology, back in the early days of mainframes, when memory was expensive, programmers came up with a device to save lots of it. They simply omitted the code for the century part of the date. Dubbed Y2K, the problem could affect the average person in myriad ways including ATM machines, telephone switches, credit card interest rates, mortgages and "anything that's a time and date issue," Richo said. The city's finances are obviously date sensitive as are its codes and records, police data base, city permits and a host of other things. Richo, who joined the city last year to head the newly-created Information Technology Division, walked right into that major year 2000 problem and more; the city's technology was also outmoded and the department was badly understaffed. "It was very challenging ... your basic mess," said Richo. He went on to explain that by the time he arrived in late 1997 it was definitely "time for movement ... time for action." Because of the magnitude of the combined computer-related problems, it made sense to do a complete overhaul of the way the city's systems operate, Richo said. "(The combination of problems) made total replacement of these systems the right answer," Richo said. The centerpiece of the city's old computer model is an HP3000 mini computer. But by what Richo calls the "date for sure," the city's business will have moved into the client/server environment, allowing it to create an intranet for internal communications along with affording the city complete internet access. The new system will be based on Microsoft Back Office which offers a suite of servers providing "all the services and enterprise needs," Richo said. "We will be able to extend the city's services to citizens through the Web," Richo said. Among those services planned to be online are permits, access to the city budget, access to the city code and council agendas. Every city employee will also be able to send and receive email, Richo said, adding that plans are being put in place that will guarantee a prompt response to email. "Our system will be totally integrated into one pool of data," Richo explained. This "data warehousing" of an enterprise-wide data base will allow the user to extract related information from various departments. As part of the overhaul, the city will be replacing its desktop PCs. The new computers will feature 4.3 gigabyte hard drives, 128 megabytes of RAM with 300 MHz Pentium 2 processors and 17" monitors. Richo explained that the power and memory is needed for mapping. He said that 80 to 90 percent of the city's data is geographically based. "Fire trucks go to a location; taxes are paid for a location; trash trucks and busses travel a route; business licenses are for a location," he said. The new computers will have graphic displays as part of the process of integrating and presenting information. The financial conversion alone is expected to cost about $1 million, with the police and permit projects costing $750,000 and $330,000 respectively. Another $300,000 will go for hardware with about $50,000 budgeted for retraining of staff. About four more people will be added to the staff as well, according to Richo. Because of the upgrade, the city will be donating 100 personal computers to the Culver City Unified School District. The computers which were purchased in 1994 and upgraded in 1996 won't be compatible with the new system and software. Still usable, these machines are mostly 386 and 486 models, Richo said. The idea for the gift grew out of a meeting with the Culver City Education Foundation to discuss the Digital High School Project, Richo said. "Normally, purchasing would pick them up and do whatever," Richo said. This way, the machines can help with the goal of having all high school students digitally-literate, he explained. According to the city, the computers will also be used as loaners to students that don't have computers at home. "If the machine is running then the kid can do something with it. You give a kid a machine and they'll find something to do with it ... I like that idea," Richo said |
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