Austin American Statesman Article
State workers offered bonuses
to fix 2000 pitfall
By Denise Gamino
American-Statesman Capitol Staff
Published: Nov. 16, 1997
Texas is putting its money where its
mouth is.
The state is offering $10,000 bonuses
to employees whose computer
knowledge can prevent
cyber-confusion when the year 2000
date dumps too many zeros into
databases.
But what may seem to be Texas-size
pay perks actually shrivel in bidding
wars by private companies ready to
tempt state computer experts with
six-figure salary offers.
In the crossfire are employees like
Tel, a systems manager at the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation, rejected a $100,000 job offer-double her state pay- to stick with the state and the $10,000 bonus. Al, head of the year 2000 project for the Texas Department of Human Services, also decided to stay put and collect the big bonus.
"It means, hey, somebody really thinks a lot of us to want to have an incentive program to keep us," Al said.
"I would like to say I would have stayed anyway, but you just never know what the offer might be," she said. "So this certainly makes it a good incentive."
Their task is to prepare Texas for the turn of the century by changing software and data so computers that read only the last two digits of a date won't mistake 2000 for 1900.
For you, the difference between fixing the glitch and not may mean the check will be in the mail-or not.
If the so-called millennial bug is not corrected, government computers that process state taxes, criminal histories, welfare benefits, public investments, medical records, payrolls and driver's licences could malfunction.
Nearly every state computer is involved, from desktop PCs to room-size mainframes.
Consider the enormous amount of work to understand why skilled programmers get job offers like most people get junk mail. At the Texas Department of Human Services, according to one calculation, one programmer working alone would need 200 years to make all the corrections caused by the glitch.
Turnover is so high among state computer programmers that even the $10,000 offer won't keep them all.
"I have two more resignations this week," Mary, assistant chief of administration at the Texas Department of Public Safety, said Thursday. By Friday, a third programmer had resigned.
"We have had just a hemorrhage of technical staff who have left us, sometimes doubling their salary."
The DPS lost 38 computer analysts this year, including two who had signed up for the $10,000 bonus.
"We don't expect it to get better in the immediate future," said Carolyn, executive director of the Texas Department of Information Resources.
"We think it will get worse," she said. "I've heard estimates of between 60,000 and 200,000 vacant information technology positions in the United States right now."
Workers who quit after signing the bonus contract will not face penalties.
They just don't collect any money.
So far several hundred state employees have signed the promises to stay on the job until May 31, 2000.
The millennial bug may cost Texas-excluding its colleges-more than $200 million, an IBM study said.
Most agencies will fix computer systems with money already in their budgets. The Legislature approved more than $100 million for 23 agencies that said they couldn't rework their computer systems without extra money. Another $9 million was set aside for contingencies.
Legislation allows state agencies to pay the $10,000 bonus to workers who are considered critical to the 2000 project if they had been employed by the agency for three years before September.
State officials won't know until early December exactly how many employees signed $10,000 bonus contracts. That's when agencies must file a report on their bonus efforts.
A spot check shows the Department of Human Services has 92 workers signed up ($920,000); Comptroller of Public Accounts, 41 ($410,000);
Texas Department of Public Safety, 39 ($390,000); and the Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation, 14 ($140,000).
"We found we almost had to do this," said Kaye, coordinator of the project at the comptroller's office.
In some of the comptroller's computer systems, just one employee has the expertise necessary to guide the agency through the year 2000 changes and the agency could not afford to lose that worker, Kaye said.
Some agencies rely on the $10,000 bonus to retain critical computer experts, but not all. The Texas Department of Transportation, for instance, could not work out how to fairly choose which employees should get the bonuses.
"It got down to, where do I draw that line between who's critical," said Cassie, deputy executive director for administrative services. "That's really tough."
Highway department computer experts can move from project to project, and others had completed their work on the 2000 project before the bonus program was created.
"The more my staff surfaced more and more issues on how to be fair, their recommendation was to me we just not utilize it," Cassie said.
Cathy, a computer systems analyst for the Transportation Department, said the staff meeting got "kinda quiet" when managers announced the no-bonus policy.
"I think, naturally, it would have been nice to receive the money, but I don't think it would have been fair to everyone," she said.
"They were fair, dadgummit." |
