Mainframe Systems

As in previous reports, the Countywide Accounting and Personnel System (CAPS) remains our number one priority mainframe system because of the intensive remediation needed and the potential impact on County operations. A major milestone was reached when we successfully closed the books and began the 99/00 fiscal year. Significant work remains, but we are on schedule to complete all CAPS Y2K tasks by the end of September. We are using a special software program that checks much of the CAPS program code as an added safety check to ensure our HR and financial systems are ready.

All other mainframe systems are either complete or in the testing phase and will be ready. All these systems have tested dates through January 1 and are now testing such dates as February 28/29, 2000. Testing has gone extremely well with only minor issues uncovered to date.

Departmental Systems

Many departmental systems are now shown as being compliant, a very good sign that we are making significant progress in our remediation efforts. Almost every system shown as non-compliant is in the testing stage or awaiting interface testing. All systems are scheduled to be ready for January 1, 2000.

Environmental Mechanical and Safety Systems (Embedded Systems)

Again, no significant issues were reported. As we stated in the previous report, this is an area where we could have some surprises because of the difficulty in identifying, testing and fixing embedded systems.

Interfaces

Included in Section 4 (Data Center Report) is a detailed list and status report on the 216 interfaces between applications running in the data center. Of those 216, 58 interface to external partners such as the California DMV. California is now making test systems available, and we are at last making some progress in that area. All indications are that we will be able to test all State interfaces on time.

Personal Computer Hardware

Very few PCs remain to be tested or replaced. This area looks good.

Summary

Over the past six months, the County continued to make great progress towards having all critical systems ready to operate when January 1, 2000 arrives. Our goal is to make January 1, 2000 a non-event, computerwise. If schedules are met as presented, we can expect some minimal level of disruption but no major long term service issues. There is always a very slight chance that some outside events could cause a severe disruption; i.e., the national power grid collapses, but that chance seems to be growing less and less likely. At the Federal level, almost all systems are reported as being compliant. We remain cautiously optimistic about the status of County systems. We expect some surprises, but they should be minimal and expeditiously resolved. Contingency planning is in progress and County staff will work over the January 1 weekend to fix any system that fails and also to retest our systems.