Howdy Folks,

In a department at GSC: nice lady that does the timekeeping(sick leave, vacation leave, that kind of stuff) says the software in her department is screwing up.

Enters in stuff for December 1999, comes up as December 2059(!) and also 2099(this makes a little more sense than the former).

After entered in and this glitch comes up, she can't query the data any more.

People are gonna get irate if they don't have accurate leave balances(especially if it affects their pay, which it certainly can)!

Folks that GSC hired to fix this stuff said informally back in December that they should have it fixed by March or April, unless the department in question purchases new timekeeping software(they are trying to, but they couldn't get the funding for it; very complicated internal politics going on here). This is a possibility, in light of the problems that are getting worse with the current software package(they have been manually adjusting timekeeping records since September 1, 1999, when GSC went into Fiscal Year 2000) that a replacement software package might drop into this troubled department soon. Soon enough? Your guess is as good as mine.

Yow.

If this department's employees get messed up paychecks over the next two months, many may walk. Quite a few of them live paycheck to paycheck, and the work they do pays better in the private sector(as it does in the case of most state duties, but particularly for this department).

If you go to GSC's Website( http://www.gsc.state.tx.us/y2k/y2k.html)

and poke around, you'll find a department that is listed as "There are no Year 2000 problems for this division"

This is the department with the timekeeping problem that IS a Y2K problem.

We did get paid on the 3rd of January, BTW. Pay period was 12-01-99 to 12-31-99.

We haven't seen what will happen with our payrolls post-Y2K rollover yet.

Holding onto my preps,

Don

-- Shimoda (enlighten@me.com), January 04, 2000

Answers

"many of them may walk ...."

Walk where?

There was a very elaborate rather pollyannish post on TB2000 a little over a week back, from a IT Texan working in remediation at the State level. It was ALL crowing and preening over the level of expertise appllied to the problem, and the anticipated glitch-free results. Drew many congratulations and more than a couple skeptical commenbs from the regulars here. Hope you just found the only fly in his soup.

-- SH (squirrel@huntr.com), January 04, 2000.

SH,

Uh, actuallyno.

In fact, one of the main reasons I prepared as much as I did was because I became privy to how GSC was doing remediation, contingency planning, and their methods of self-reporting compliance. Way too long to get into right now; if I have time this week, I'll write down most of the stuff I saw and entitle it "Squirrel Hunter's Tome" so you know what it is.

They scared me, not just because of what they were doing(and not doing) but because they were fairly representational of a Texas State agency. In fact, GSC usually is held to an even higher standard, as they look over other State agencies in some cases.

Still holding onto my preps,

Don

-- Shimoda (enlighten@me.com), January 04, 2000.