City of St. Petersburg Logo
July 21, 1998
Ms. Christina Brundage
[rest of address left out for privacy reasons]
Dear Ms. Brundage:
The City of St. Petersburg has taken, and is continuing to
take, all reasonable measures to prevent measures to prevent
any year 2000 (Y2K) problems from interrupting services
supplied by the City. The City has developed a comprehensive
plan to deal with the Y2K problems. This plan includes a
detailed analysis of all core business systems, a review of
all departmental systems, and a survey and recommendations for
desktop hardware and software support equipment.
The City's Y2K efforts began in 1997. During the
FY 98-99 budget process, initial provisions were made to
replace aging non-Y2K compliant hardware. Desktop systems
remain under review, and testing for software fixes for
486-based processors is continuing. Core business system
evaluations have been completed and certifications for
commercial applications have been requested. The Information
and Communication Services (ICS) staff is working with software
and hardware vendors to ensure compliancy.
ICS has installed a separate computer system that is dedicated
to Y2K testing. Testing programs and procedures have been
developed by ICS and Internal Audit. Several test teams have
been established, consisiting of deparmental personnel, ICS
Systems Development staff, ICS Technical Support staff and ICS
Operations staff. These teams will be augmented with contracted
personnel on an as-needed basis. Y2K requirements will dominate
ICS activities through 1999. In order to accomplish this effort,
ICS has restricted new development to critical or mandated
requirements only. User departments have been asked to prioritize
their requests and some critical requests have been contracted to
outside programming sources.
The final phase of the Y2K effort will take place in the 90
days prior to 2000 and in the 90 days thereafter. Despite
all of our efforts, there may be some residual problems; threfore,
ICS plans to have a team dedicated to resolving undetected Y2K problems
in both legacy applications and desktop systems.
Sincerely
[signed]
Muslim A Gadiwalla
Chief Inormation Officer
cc: The Honorable Beatrice M. Griswold, Council Chair and
Members of City Council
David J. Fischer, Mayor
Darrel W. Stephens, City Administrator
PO BOX 2842, ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA 33731-2842 TELEPHONE [813] 895-7171
Pinellas County Commissioner Harris' Response
Florida Power Corporation Response
Back to Pinepage
My $0.02 on this letter:
Although I saw a remarked imrovement on how St. Pete's Muslim A. Gadiwalla,
Chief Information Officer made, compared to FPL, I still see, compared to Commissioner
Harris' response, a number of deficincy statements.
The socalled "comprehensive plan" doesn't come with any statistics....how
are we to go back and check on progress? Find out if they are More Comprehensive??? Duh...
In the second paragraph you might see how statistics are even more important
to have. If they started work in 1997, that is too late, especially when one
notes that on September 20, 1997 -- Doug Engfer, the president of a Silicon
Valley software firm whcih helps major corporations ready their
computer systems for the year 2000 (Y2K). "If shareholders of America's
major corporations knew the state of the Y2K assessment in those companies,
they'd be appalled" and, "We can count on similar bombs from industries
we have trusted in the private sector, including banks, credi card companies and
others," he stated. As well, Engfer said "Even if they begin work immediately,
most organizations will not be able to complete their projects in time".
Stats are important, they give us a way to gauge, at least in ballpark
figures, what we can expect.