London Councils Computers Doomed

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" We were told the year 2000 programme was going nicely." .

This will be the mantra of the new millenium...

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Issue date: 2 September 1999 Article source: Computer Weekly News London councils fight to avert Y2K fiasco Tony Collins and Mike Simons

Two London councils have abandoned a joint bespoke software system in what may be one of the first year 2000 project disasters where there is no clear fall-back position.

Haringey and Tower Hamlets councils are now urgently seeking off-the-shelf packages to collect business rates after agreeing to waive standing orders on seeking competitive bids.

Their old IBM-based mainframe systems that were used this year to collect business rates are not fully millennium compliant.

Haringey collects #40m a year in business rates and Tower Hamlets #120m a year. ICL, the developer of the aborted bespoke system, has accepted partial responsibility for the problems and has agreed to pay for replacement systems at a potential cost to the supplier of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Andrew Travers, head of corporate finance at Haringey, insists the councils are taking firm action to ensure they have fully compliant systems in time.

Internal council documents warn that "urgent" action is required to ensure the councils meet their statutory duties to collect business rates.

In 1997, Haringey and Tower Hamlets entered into a tripartite agreement with ICL to develop a Unix-based business rates software - codenamed Cobra - to replace the IBM system which was not year 2000 compliant.

Although Cobra went live in March this year and can issue ad hoc bills, the council say it lacks a key facility: the ability to issue annual bills for business rates en masse .

"Discussions with ICL about the completion of these modules has resulted in both Tower Hamlets and Haringey withdrawing from any further system development," says an internal letter to councillors dated last month.

Haringey has questioned ICL's management of the project. However the supplier's staff are understood to believe that the project was hit by "scope-creep" whereby the specification was never frozen, leaving no fixed agreed design on which to complete an operational system.

ICL believes it can implement Cobra in time for the next scheduled run of the annual business rates early next year. But Haringey and Tower Hamlets have decided not to take the risk. A letter from David Warwick, Haringey's director of corporate services, to leading councillors said that the council is abandoning the Cobra project.

Councillor Peter Forrest, Conservative opposition leader at Haringey, said, "It is staggering to find that with little more than four months to go to the millennium, the council's main business rates software system is not Y2K compliant, and that the planned replacement has collapsed."

At Tower Hamlets, councillor Janet Ludlow, leader of the opposition Liberal group, said, "We have not heard a whiff of this. We were told the year 2000 programme was going nicely."

Haringey's Travers says there is time before next year's business rates billing run to install a compliant system. "We're not being complacent. We could leave things as they are and hope that ICL will successfully complete Cobra but we think that's too risky."

Robin Guenier, executive director of Taskforce 2000, said, "Anyone providing broad-based public services can't hide year 2000 problems in the same way as the private sector."

Catch up with all the latest Y2K issues in the Millennium section of the Management Area.

------------------------------------------------------------------------ FAQ, Contact us, send feedback @COMPUTERWEEKLY ) 1999 Reed Business Information Limited

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), September 02, 1999

Answers

I think things are entering into the timeframe where we will begin to see alot of incidents like these. Little fore-shocks, a mere 2.0 on the "OS" (Oh, Shit) scale.

They will increase in magnitude an frequency over the course of the next few months, culminating with the "big ones" next year.

R.

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), September 02, 1999.


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