Government Technology - December 2007 - (Page 27)

ANOTHER FASCINATING EPISODE from the late ’90s was the attack of the Y2K bug, a date-coding problem that threatened to wipe out computers and networks around the world. IT staff in all sectors worked feverishly, going through millions of lines of computer code to change dates from two to four digits before the year 2000 arrived. Ultimately more than $300 billion was spent to squash the bug before it could wreak havoc, according to the BBC. For CIOs, Y2K was somewhat of a double-edged sword. Because the Y2K problem was so urgent and pervasive, governments began viewing IT from an enterprise perspective — and the CIO became a high-profile player in government operations. Unfortunately success meant that nothing happened. Although some jurisdictions used the Y2K threat as a reason to replace old systems, many others chose to fix their legacy applications. Therefore, the investment of significant time and money left them no better off — but luckily no worse — than they were before. As the 1900s came to a close, many technology issues government faces today were just beginning to rear their heads. Wireless technology was poised to flourish and cell phone use expanded rapidly. Indeed, cell phones would present governments with a significant challenge in the coming years. The devices had a glaring drawback — the difficulty of pinpointing the location from which wireless 911 calls originated. New Jersey was among the first states to address the problem. Using electronic mapping and triangulation of cell phone towers; the state had good success in narrowing down a caller’s location. In 2000, the FCC ordered wireless carriers to implement technologies that could provide public service answering points (PSAPs) with precise locations. The dual-phase FCC plan called for a rollout of new technologies over several years. Generally new phones are now equipped with GPS chips that give a caller’s exact location. The issue would come up yet again, however, with the rise of voice over IP . ‘IT WAS VERY CLOSE TO COMING APART’ San Diego County, Calif., outsourcing pays off after a few rough years. In the late 1990s, San Diego County wanted to implement sweeping operational changes aimed at making the jurisdiction run like a business. Unfortunately the county’s creaky IT infrastructure wasn’t up to the task. Facing a modernization price tag of several hundred million dollars, San Diego took a different path, opting in 1999 to outsource county IT operations to a consortium of private companies led by Computer Sciences Corp. It was a bold move, coming just months after Connecticut cancelled a $1 billion initiative to outsource state IT systems. At first, San Diego’s seven-year, $644 million outsourcing plan seemed destined for a similar fate. “The deal got off to a pretty rocky start, quite honestly,” said Michael Moore, who saw the initiative from both sides, first as an executive with one of the outsourcing vendors, then as San Diego County CIO from 2002 to 2007. “The companies made assumptions about what was there, the county made assumptions about what was there, and some of those assumptions turned out to be fairly off in mark. So the first couple of years of the deal were really a discovery period for both the county and the contractor.” The initial years were so rough that the contract was nearly scrapped, but the county and its contractors eventually worked out their differences and began reaping the benefits of the comprehensive — if painful — IT overhaul. Nearly 10 years later, San Diego’s outsourcing contract, recently renegotiated with Northrop Grumman, remains one of the largest and most successful of its kind. “In retrospect, it was very close to coming apart, and many predicted it would come apart,” said Moore, who left the county earlier this year. “[But] we got that transformation, and that transformation has allowed us to do a lot of things that governments are struggling with.” STEVE TOWNS, EDITOR Microsoft releases Windows XP Color PalmPilot is introduced In June 2001, the WiMAX Forum was created to promote compatibility among the IEEE 802.16/ETSI HiperMAN (the European equivalent) standard wireless equipment manufacturers. However, limited spectrum and chipset availability have slowed its adoption in the U.S. State and local governments begin adopting CRM software Wikipedia begins Terrorists attack the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11 Apple’s iPod brought digital music out of niche and into mainstream. The first iPod had a 5 GB capacity and an acclaimed user interface. Current iPods include the classic, with 160 GB of storage, Mini, Nano, as well as the iPod Shuffle, which is literally the size of a postage stamp. 99-01 27 http://www.govtech.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - December 2007

Government Technology - December 2007 Contents Point of View Big Picture Profile The Last Mile GT Spectrum Well...How Did We Get Here? Dark Spaces A Paler Shade of Green? Decertification Dilemma Game On Two Cents Products Signal:Noise

Government Technology - December 2007

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