ENTERPRISE COMPUTING | Beat the Clock
| Beat the Clock Oldies but goodies. The National Finance Center in New Orleans has managed its year 2000 project without a large contingent of extra contractors, dollars or automated tools. The reason is Ed McManus, who said he manages projects the only way he knows how: "the old-fashioned way."
| Beat the Clock Oldies but goodies. The The reason is Ed McManus, who said he manages projects the only way he knows how: I get good people I can depend on, give them direction and stay on top of them, The cross-servicing center, run by the Agriculture Department, has 1,800 federal Bring em back. He brought back four The four have aggregate experience adding up to 140 years, and, McManus said, each of Two of the four rehired employees were already working part time, two days a week, on Earlier this year, the Office of Personnel Management issued waivers for rehires NFC so far has spent $8 million on its year 2000 effort, most of it this fiscal year, The center had made large investments over the years in software from Computer The best method was to go through the code line for line, McManus said. Programmers burrowed through 23.5 million lines of Cobol code and old IDMS databases to It was like going into an old closet, McManus said. Tools but not factories. McManus tried a I thought we went faster and cleaner doing it ourselves, he said. For the next big phase, validation testing, McManus and his staff will load their Florence Olsen
National Finance Center in New Orleans has managed its year 2000 project without a large
contingent of extra contractors, dollars or automated tools.
the old-fashioned way.
and thats how we pulled it off, said McManus, former associate director of the
IRM Division at the center. Now he manages its year 2000 readiness project.
employees and a couple hundred contractors. The year 2000 work was done by 200 federal
employees, mostly from the Applications Systems Division, McManus said.
retired employees to work at full salary under waivers to the regulation that prevents
double-dipping by government retirees.
them has been able to do the work of two or three contractors.
the year 2000 project. They had accepted reduced pay because they enjoyed the challenge,
McManus said.
engaged in year 2000 work, letting them return without salary reductions to offset their
monthly retirement annuities.
McManus said, and not much of it for new tools.
Associates International Inc., especially CA-IDMS databases. When the programmers needed
code assessment tools, they turned to CA-Examine 3.1 and CA-Impact 2000.
find and fix the two-digit year dates that could cause problems in central accounting,
administrative payments, payroll and the governments popular Thrift Savings Plan.
factory tool, thinking it might expedite the project. He decided it added to the burden of
the centers database administrators.
applications onto an IBM OS/390 time machine and watch what happens as they run a date
simulator on the corrected code.
folsen@gcn.com
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