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TV company keeps unwanted mainframe
Computer Audit Update
Auditors call for change in council IT spending The Audit Commission, the UK Government w a t c h d o g , has severely criticized local Government IT departments for keeping spending under their control, according to a report in Computer Weekly. In its recently published report, Behind closed doors - - the revolution in central support services, the Audit Commission argues for the break up of IT departments to improve service levels. The commission believes that users are getting frustrated with lack of support coupled with the degree of control central support services exercise. Up to 50% of user departments are claimed to be unhappy with the service they receive from central IT departments. According to the commission, "Increasingly, front-line services are delivered at arms length from the centre, but central support services have been slow to adjust to this change in the balance of power. Their controlling role should now be replaced by a supporting one. One dissenting voice was Roger Marshall, president of Socitm, the local Government IT manager's association. Breaking up a central IT department is not necessarily a good thing, commented Marshall. "You have to ask if users are qualified to run IT."
April 1994
Fire at PacBell disrupts services A fire at Pacific Bell switching facility in downtown Los Angeles crippled the city's phone service, blocking calls, knocking out many appeals for emergency services, disrupting businesses and shutting down automatic teller machines (ATMs). The fire at Bunker Hill caused greater disruption to the city's services than the January earthquake. According to a report in the L.A. Times, the widespread breakdown was one of the worst in the recent history of Southern California. Fax numbers were idle, stockbrokers could not call New York, and credit card users were told to use cash. The Wells Fargo Bank lost the use of 700 of its 1800 ATMs and at the Bank of America service to 1500 of the 2100 ATMs was affected. The owners of the building are under orders to comply with a new sprinkler law approved after the First Interstate Bank fire. The work was nearly completed, but sprinklers had not been installed in the area where the fire occurred. The fire took, on the 13th storey of the building, took 80 firefighters less than 90 minutes to e x t i n g u i s h . It began when A T & T subcontractors were working on a unit that powers one of the busiest switching offices in the USA. The fire knocked out the unit, severing the main power source to the switching station. Because they had no power PacBell could not transfer the traffic to another switching office, as was done during the earthquake.
Skaters gridlock news service A US electronic business and financial news service was brought to a halt when thousands of subscribers to Bloomberg Business News jammed the service, according to a report in Computing. The incident of such importance was the outcome of the women's figure skating c o m p e t i t i o n at the Winter Olympics. Unfortunately, the shutdown occurred at a critical point in business trading, at 4.16 pm, as the final stock and bond prices were being reported in New York. The editor explained that if everybody types the same function at the same moment, you'll have gridlock. Fortunately, the shutdown only lasted a few minutes.
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TV company keeps unwanted mainframe The UK's Granada Television has been forced to keep its unwanted ICL series 900 mainframe because of the prohibitive costs of porting an artist's payments application. According to Computing, the company has committed £1 million to finance a mainframe downsize project, based on two Pyramid high-end Unix servers running mission critical applications. The company has successfully moved its financial, scripting, TV programme planning and costing applications to the Pyramid platform. Problems occurred with the artist's
@1994 Elsevier Science Ltd
April 1994
payment code. Proposals to rewrite the payments code were rejected because the cost would be too high. Prices quoted ranged from £240 000 to £500 000.
Fear of disaster paralyses IT departments In the UK, a series of computer disasters in health service IT departments has reduced IT managers' confidence to argue the case that money must be spent on badly needed upgrades to their systems, reported Computer Weekly. Because of Government reforms, IT managers are being forced to modernize their systems to generate 'lifeblood' information. Several key projects have been hit by problems leading to a slump in morale and the loss of nearly £100 million. Health minister Virginia Bottomley has order an investigation into w h e t h e r her department provides value for money. The report will focus on the Information Management Group which has an annual budget of £51 million. Some of the national schemes that have faced problems include: the £21 million Hospital Information Support System, which fizzled out; the Casemix management information system, which was installed at 240 sites, at the cost of £70 million, but was implemented before the raw data was available to make system useful; and begun in 1988, a £7.3 million project to design a Common Basic Specification, which describes the health service functions in a form that computers can understand that is still in its pilot stage.
£40 million Plato downsizer abandoned The insurance company Prudential has admitted defeat with its ambitious £40 million
@1994 Elsevier Science Ltd
ComputerAudit Update
client/server project Plato. According to Computing, all future development work has been cancelled. The five-year project was intended to migrate applications from IBM mainframes to Hewlett Packard and Sun Unix servers and workstations. Prudential had intended to use Unix and the Open Software Foundation's Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) technology to structure databases around customers' names rather than account numbers. The original development of Plato was delayed when the company could not find enough IT staff familiar with DCE. Last May, the company laid off 43 contractors working on Plato and conducted an in-depth review to get the project back on target, result was a revised strategy, Plato II, however, this was scrapped after further review this February.
DoE defends £48 million investment in IT project The Department of Employment (DOE) has rejected the scathing findings of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report on its £48 million investment in an IT project. The Department defended its expenditure on the Field System, designed to link area offices, reported Computing. The Treasury Minute, a formal r e s p o n s e to the PAC report said, "The Department of Employment notes, but does not share, the Committee's general conclusions about the Field System. The system was delivered within budget and substantially to time." MPs on the PAC have accused the Department of squandering millions since 1990 on a computer system to link the 82 Training and Enterprise Councils and, ironically, to make them more accountable for how they spend their money. The DoE defends spending £48 million of the estimated £71 million price of the system.
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Auditors call for change in council IT spending The Audit Commission, the UK Government w a t c h d o g , has severely criticized local Government IT departments for keeping spending under their control, according to a report in Computer Weekly. In its recently published report, Behind closed doors - - the revolution in central support services, the Audit Commission argues for the break up of IT departments to improve service levels. The commission believes that users are getting frustrated with lack of support coupled with the degree of control central support services exercise. Up to 50% of user departments are claimed to be unhappy with the service they receive from central IT departments. According to the commission, "Increasingly, front-line services are delivered at arms length from the centre, but central support services have been slow to adjust to this change in the balance of power. Their controlling role should now be replaced by a supporting one. One dissenting voice was Roger Marshall, president of Socitm, the local Government IT manager's association. Breaking up a central IT department is not necessarily a good thing, commented Marshall. "You have to ask if users are qualified to run IT."
April 1994
Fire at PacBell disrupts services A fire at Pacific Bell switching facility in downtown Los Angeles crippled the city's phone service, blocking calls, knocking out many appeals for emergency services, disrupting businesses and shutting down automatic teller machines (ATMs). The fire at Bunker Hill caused greater disruption to the city's services than the January earthquake. According to a report in the L.A. Times, the widespread breakdown was one of the worst in the recent history of Southern California. Fax numbers were idle, stockbrokers could not call New York, and credit card users were told to use cash. The Wells Fargo Bank lost the use of 700 of its 1800 ATMs and at the Bank of America service to 1500 of the 2100 ATMs was affected. The owners of the building are under orders to comply with a new sprinkler law approved after the First Interstate Bank fire. The work was nearly completed, but sprinklers had not been installed in the area where the fire occurred. The fire took, on the 13th storey of the building, took 80 firefighters less than 90 minutes to e x t i n g u i s h . It began when A T & T subcontractors were working on a unit that powers one of the busiest switching offices in the USA. The fire knocked out the unit, severing the main power source to the switching station. Because they had no power PacBell could not transfer the traffic to another switching office, as was done during the earthquake.
Skaters gridlock news service A US electronic business and financial news service was brought to a halt when thousands of subscribers to Bloomberg Business News jammed the service, according to a report in Computing. The incident of such importance was the outcome of the women's figure skating c o m p e t i t i o n at the Winter Olympics. Unfortunately, the shutdown occurred at a critical point in business trading, at 4.16 pm, as the final stock and bond prices were being reported in New York. The editor explained that if everybody types the same function at the same moment, you'll have gridlock. Fortunately, the shutdown only lasted a few minutes.
18
TV company keeps unwanted mainframe The UK's Granada Television has been forced to keep its unwanted ICL series 900 mainframe because of the prohibitive costs of porting an artist's payments application. According to Computing, the company has committed £1 million to finance a mainframe downsize project, based on two Pyramid high-end Unix servers running mission critical applications. The company has successfully moved its financial, scripting, TV programme planning and costing applications to the Pyramid platform. Problems occurred with the artist's
@1994 Elsevier Science Ltd
April 1994
payment code. Proposals to rewrite the payments code were rejected because the cost would be too high. Prices quoted ranged from £240 000 to £500 000.
Fear of disaster paralyses IT departments In the UK, a series of computer disasters in health service IT departments has reduced IT managers' confidence to argue the case that money must be spent on badly needed upgrades to their systems, reported Computer Weekly. Because of Government reforms, IT managers are being forced to modernize their systems to generate 'lifeblood' information. Several key projects have been hit by problems leading to a slump in morale and the loss of nearly £100 million. Health minister Virginia Bottomley has order an investigation into w h e t h e r her department provides value for money. The report will focus on the Information Management Group which has an annual budget of £51 million. Some of the national schemes that have faced problems include: the £21 million Hospital Information Support System, which fizzled out; the Casemix management information system, which was installed at 240 sites, at the cost of £70 million, but was implemented before the raw data was available to make system useful; and begun in 1988, a £7.3 million project to design a Common Basic Specification, which describes the health service functions in a form that computers can understand that is still in its pilot stage.
£40 million Plato downsizer abandoned The insurance company Prudential has admitted defeat with its ambitious £40 million
@1994 Elsevier Science Ltd
ComputerAudit Update
client/server project Plato. According to Computing, all future development work has been cancelled. The five-year project was intended to migrate applications from IBM mainframes to Hewlett Packard and Sun Unix servers and workstations. Prudential had intended to use Unix and the Open Software Foundation's Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) technology to structure databases around customers' names rather than account numbers. The original development of Plato was delayed when the company could not find enough IT staff familiar with DCE. Last May, the company laid off 43 contractors working on Plato and conducted an in-depth review to get the project back on target, result was a revised strategy, Plato II, however, this was scrapped after further review this February.
DoE defends £48 million investment in IT project The Department of Employment (DOE) has rejected the scathing findings of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report on its £48 million investment in an IT project. The Department defended its expenditure on the Field System, designed to link area offices, reported Computing. The Treasury Minute, a formal r e s p o n s e to the PAC report said, "The Department of Employment notes, but does not share, the Committee's general conclusions about the Field System. The system was delivered within budget and substantially to time." MPs on the PAC have accused the Department of squandering millions since 1990 on a computer system to link the 82 Training and Enterprise Councils and, ironically, to make them more accountable for how they spend their money. The DoE defends spending £48 million of the estimated £71 million price of the system.
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