Atlanta GA won't make it to Y2K compliancy...sez atlanta officials. water readiness didn't even make the "cut" on following story of vital municipal services...WOW
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City misses mark on computer bug (Atlanta)
( excerpt:)
<< Atlanta computer engineers will be working down to the wire to assure that on
New Year's Day, city residents can flush their toilets, call police or firefighters in
need and count on traffic lights to work.
But to protect public safety and other essential functions, they are writing off
technology that oils the routine business of City Hall.
City officials have all but abandoned attempts to get many of their 3,000 personal
computers ready to handle the rollover from 1999 to 2000--the "Y2K bug" that is
threatening computer operations worldwide. Faced with setbacks that have put the
city months behind its original deadline for Y2K compliance, computer experts are
concentrating on essential systems, including public safety, traffic, payroll and waste
water treatment. "We have made conscious choices that there are some things that
are more important than other things," said Herb McCall, Atlanta's administrative
services commissioner, who is spearheading the city's Y2K compliance effort. >>
City misses mark on computer bug
By Julie B. Hairston, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Atlanta computer engineers will be working
down to the wire to assure that on New Year's
Day, city residents can flush their toilets, call
police or firefighters in need and count on traffic lights to work.
But to protect public safety and other essential functions, they are writing off
technology that oils the routine business of City Hall.
City officials have all but abandoned attempts to get many of their 3,000
personal computers ready to handle the rollover from 1999 to 2000--the "Y2K
bug" that is threatening computer operations worldwide. Faced with setbacks
that have put the city months behind its original deadline for Y2K compliance,
computer experts are concentrating on essential systems, including public
safety, traffic, payroll and waste water treatment. "We have made conscious
choices that there are some things that are more important than other things,"
said Herb McCall, Atlanta's administrative services commissioner, who is
spearheading the city's Y2K compliance effort.
Although Chick Vossen, an information services manager, said leaving those
PCs until after the first of the year "won't make any difference," some outside
experts on Y2K computer problems predict there will be fallout.
Failure to bring all of the city's PCs into compliance is likely to have a
"cascading" impact throughout the system, said Michael Flores, chief executive
of Bretton Woods Inc., a consulting firm that advises public and private
organizations on Y2K programs.
"You've got to take a holistic approach to this thing," Flores said. Even though
the primary functions of the non-compliant systems aren't essential, failure to
fix those systems would have some impact on critical processes, Flores said.
Ron Dolinsky, executive director of the Atlanta-Southeast Region Y2K Solutions
Center, warned that the city's non-compliance could have a "ripple effect" on
the business community.
"I don't think it's a very good situation in a city with half-a-million people to not
be ready," said Dolinsky, whose non-profit organization assists small
businesses with Y2K problems. Dolinsky thinks the city's experience with Y2K
bugs will be "more like confusion than chaos," though, as long as the critical
systems are debugged. "When you decide not to do all your PCs citywide, you
have to figure there's nothing in the PCs worth saving," said Norman Singer, an
attorney representing Information Systems and Networks Inc., the consultant
the city fired March 5 in a dispute over money, personnel and the progress of
the city's Y2K project.
ISN was hired to find and fix all the Y2K glitches in the city's vast system of
computers and computer-aided processes.
City memos indicate that the day ISN removed its 140 employees from City
Hall, hope of avoiding all potential Y2K pitfalls in the city's technology left the
building with them.
A month earlier, a high-level technology employee with the city warned his
superiors in an electronic message that Atlanta could not possibly reach its
goal without the consultant's help.
"I believe we must work with ISN," wrote Larry W. Price, network operations
manager for the city's Bureau of Management Information Systems. "To me, it's
not a question of 'losing' with or without them; it's with them we have a chance,
without them we lose for sure. It's way too late to try to start over."
Three companies, American Computer Technologies, S.L. King & Associates
and TRW, have since been hired at a total of $1.5 million to assume some of
the duties formerly performed by ISN. Although ISN was selected from a state
list of pre-screened Y2K consultants and hired under provisions of a standard
state contract that most cities and counties statewide are using, none of the
three replacement companies are on the list.
'Piecemeal analysis'
"What they're doing is a piecemeal analysis," said Singer. ISN filed a $100
million lawsuit against the city after the company's contract was terminated and
its employees barred from City Hall.
The Y2K bug is a problem because many computers and computer programs,
especially those produced before 1995, will render the year 2000 as "00" and
misinterpret it as 1900. This has the potential to cause a range of problems,
from minor mistakes to complete shutdowns.
Governments and private companies throughout the nation have been
spending billions of dollars to locate and fix all of the potential problems before
the end of 1999. Y2K glitches may also be present in computer chips that help
operate such things as heating and air-conditioning systems and elevators.
Some computers and programs may escape the problem because they aren't
dated.
Reams of paper records on the city's Y2K compliance effort show city officials
are painfully aware how little time is left.
McCall termed the city's Y2K mission an "emergency" in a late April
appearance before the City Council's Finance/Executive Committee, and told
council members that work on one of the "mission critical" systems will
continue well into November. Many others, including the city's Criminal Justice
Information System and its wide area network, two of its most extensive and
complex systems, are not scheduled to be compliant until the end of October,
four months after Mayor Bill Campbell's original deadline for citywide
compliance, June 30. Two critical systems, including a payroll program, aren't
scheduled for completion until Jan. 1.
"We may have seven months, but there is work to be done in every minute of
those remaining seven months," McCall said.
Word-processing vulnerable
The city spent $6.6 million in 1997 and expected to spend $8.3 million in 1998
on Y2K repairs, according to a September 1998 memo from McCall to the
Finance Department. In 1999, McCall said, the city anticipated spending more
than $9 million on its Y2K program.
That may have changed with the termination of ISN, which had estimated it
would cost $13 million to make city computers and equipment 100 percent
Y2K compliant by the end of the year. City computer network manager Price
confirmed that responsibility for Y2K compliance for non-critical systems has
been returned to individual city departments so the information services
bureau can concentrate on essential fixes.
"For right now, it's our goal to be sure that mission-critical systems are Y2K
compliant rather than trying to have every PC in the city compliant," Price said.
McCall, however, said that all PCs that are connected to any of the city's servers
or networks will be brought into compliance. These would include all
computers that are connected through a centralized memory bank that allows
data entered into one PC to be displayed on another.
The PCs that will not be compliant are used in offices that are "heavy into word
processing," including the City Attorney's Office, said information services
manager Vossen.
"A lot of those are not going to be compliant, but it won't make any difference,"
Vossen said.
Vossen said office machines such as copiers and fax machines will not be
checked for Y2K compliance before the end of the year.
Jabari Simama, director of communications for the Mayor's Office of
Communications, said his office's PCs are Y2K compliant, but the readiness
of its cameras and other broadcasting equipment has not been determined.
The communications office is not on the city's list of "mission critical" functions.
Some city functions OK
Some city functions appear to be in good shape.
Hartsfield International Airport will be in compliance by the June 30 deadline
set by the Federal Aviation Administration, said Mario Diaz, airport deputy
general manager. ISN is working on the airport's computers under a separate
contract.
Doug Reichlin, vice president of operations for United Water Services, which
assumed control of the city's water system in January, said that many of the
hundreds of PCs the company took over from the city have either been
converted or replaced.
United Water is converting billing and work order systems to bug-free
programs that will be in operation by Aug. 15, Reichlin said.
Significant parts of the water system are much older than any computer, such
as the city's 100-year-old, steam-generated pump. "Some of the hardware on
the system is not very state-of-the-art, so there are no chips to malfunction or
replace," Reichlin said. The system will be compliant by Jan. 1, Reichlin said.
"We're very comfortable with where we are," Reichlin said.
Nobody is saying that about other city functions.
Dolinsky and Flores both said the city needs to have a lengthy and detailed
contingency plan for functioning without computers.
"They are so far behind the curve right now, they've got to focus almost entirely
on contingency planning," Flores said.
Administrative director McCall said that a citywide contingency plan, which is
required by the state, is being compiled from plans prepared by each
department according to guidelines the city distributed earlier this year.
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