May 6, 1998 Mr. Arthur Bouchard
1601 Palm Way Largo, FL 33771-3925

Re: Year 2000 Conversion

Dear Mr. Bouchard,

This will respond to your request through Commissioner Calvin D. Harris for an inventory and cost analyst of the Year 2000 conversion activities of the MIS Department on behalf of the departments and agencies of County Government.

To provide you with insight into our assessment of the Year 2000 coversion effort I prepared the following which defines and sizes the problem from our perspective, and summarizes our plan to successfully complete the date conversion effort in advance of the new millennium.

The Year 2000 Problem

To conserve expensive disk storage and real memory the standard date format used in most computer system and application software consists of six (6) digits expressed as MM/DD/YY. The two digit year is used in calculations to compute time periods, start/ending dates, sorts, comparisons and the like. The two digit year will be reset to 00 in the year 2000 which will be interpreted as 1900. Thus, a person born in 1960 will be 39 in 1999, and -40 in the year 2000, and a sort by date order of the years 1965, 1905, 2002 will become 02, 05, 65. This has obvious implications for all software programs which reference to use dates for calculations which would include for County Government programs computing bond reconciliations, calendaring, sentencing, fines/forfeitures, tax notices, payroll, interest calculations, billing/invoicing, licensing/permitting, inventory, subpoenas/warrants, etc. to name a few. If we are to continue business beyond the century change it is necessary that we convert all data fields to accommodate a four (4) digit year, and this extraordinary effort must be completed in advance of rollover while all systems remain operational.

The impact of the year 2000 conversion effort is spread across all of our customer application areas. These customers depend on thousandds of application production programs containing an estimated 2.5 million lines of code. Each line of code in each application, each data entry screen and each data file must be reviewed to identify, and wherever necessary to correct all data references and occurrences, and the accuracy of all calculations involving date data must be verified. Within the industry, estimates of the cost of the conversion effort ranged from $0.45 to $1.95 or more per line of code. In our discussions of the magnitude of this project with our customers and members of the Data Processing Board, we have described an effort begun in early 1996 which has and will continue to involve one-half to two-thirds of our 48 member development staff through July, 1999 at an estimated staff cost of $1.4 million per year, and an estimated contract programmer cost of $400,000 per year.

We spent the first year completing an assessment of the extent of the problem, inventorying and cross referencing the applications, libraries, files, etc., and defining relationships between specific systems to determine the modifications required. Our analyses of the conversion effort identified a number of tasks (such as identification, removal and replacement of date routines with a single department routine) which could be structured to permit assignment to relatively inexperienced staff and contract personnel. We assigned to our senior staff more complex tasks such as the preparation of conversion programs, expansion of file formats, conduct of logic changes, testing and verification activities, etc.. We entered into a multi-year contract with C. W Costello and Associates to provide contract programming personnel on an as needed basis to assist our staff through completion of the project.

To date we have devoted 34,640 staff and contract programmer hours to this project. We have completed conversion of 80-90% of the on-line or batch systems in the major application areas of County Administrator, Utilities, Tax Collector, Clerk of Court-Accounts Receivable, Probate and the ancillary areas of Sheriff Inmate Accounting and R&I, Human Rights, Payroll/Personnel, Housing Authority, interfaces with the Appraiser and Elections Supervisor, etc. Of the total hours to date,
6,750 were in the Adult Criminal Division of the Justice Information System. During the last year of this project most of our efforts will be directed at converting the Justice System. To convert the Adult and Juvenile Criminal, Civil, and Traffic Court Divisions will require and estimated 25,000 hours of staff and contract programmer effort through to the July, 1999 completion target date.

Thank you for your interest in this regard.


Cordially,

-signed-

Edward L. Lachman
Administrative Manager

cc: Commissioner Calvin D. Harris

NOTE: Hope this helps in case you want to talk to your Commissioners, corporations, etc. however, I think we are beyond government communications at this time, and our goal is to work up contingency plans that makes sense to us.
Good letter though, lots of details that we can go back to when asking for updated information as far as lines of code and updates on possible date completion changes, if need be.
Take care...
-Art-

This group is not anti-government and exists strictly for the sharing of info about preparations for possible hard times which may coming.

Florida Power Corporation Response
City of St. Petersburg