November 1987
Monthly Association Meeting Agenda
Date: December 3, 1987
Locations: Kings Table
1818 E. 4th
Time: 12:00 Noon
TOPIC: "More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Computing Literature"
Speaker: Darlene Hildebrandt,
Director U of W Computing Information Center
Newsletter Table of Contents
December 3, 1987, Association Meeting Agenda
November 5, 1987, Association Meeting Minutes
"Alphabet Soup" by Tara Wolff
"One For the Winner's Circle" by John Flanagan
We want your input!
The IPMA Newsletter staff is always looking for articles of specific interest to our State information processing community
Send your drafts to:
Kathy Marston, Editor
DIS - 1310 Jefferson
December 3, 1987, Association Meeting Agenda
1. Introduction of Guests
2. Guest Speaker
Darlene Hildebrandt
Director, University of Washington Computer Information Center
"More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Computing Literature"
3. Approval of Minutes
4. IPMA Board Report
5. ISB Announcements
6. Old Business
7. New Business
8. Correspondence
9. Other Comments/Announcements
10. Adjournment
November 5, 1987, Association Meeting Minutes
By Tara Wolff, IPMA Secretary
Darrel Riffe, Chairman, opened the meeting at 12:20 p.m.
Luncheon Speaker
Program Chairman, Jeff Boyce introduced Will Wolf of the Department of Information Services (DIS). DIS was created in the last legislative session, as a cabinet level agency whose Director is appointed by the Governor. The legislature charged DIS with two primary functions: planning and services.
DIS is the union of four state organizational components - DPA, WDPSC, SC #3, and Telecommunications Division of GA. A new division has been created in DIS - Administrative Services. This area handles personnel and fiscal matters. Staffing for this area was pulled from the original four organizational components.
A reorganization study of DIS will be underway very soon. DIS is a self-sustaining agency.
Some statistics about DIS:
The DIS Budget is $167 million
There are about 440 FTE's;
SC#3 - 154 FTE's
WDPSC- 218 FTE's
Telecommunications 55 FTE's
Admin. Services 7 FTE's
Planning 12 FTE's
DIS provides a lot of service:
DIS serves around 200 customers.
There are 1200 terminals on the combined networks.
Combined database capacity is over 245 billion characters on line. If all of this data was loaded on 364K floppy diskettes and stacked, it would be just under one mile high.
DIS processes 113,000 batch jobs/month, 15 million transactions/month, and 110 minion lines of print/month.
The Planning Division processes 4,000 acquisition fact sheets/year.
Will sees a role for the IPMA vis a vis DIS. The IPMA can have an impact as a large number of agencies are represented in its membership.
Some key issues DIS will be grappling with are listed below (these are not prioritized). These issues may represent opportunities for the IPMA to take a pro-active stance.
Key Issues:
Strategic plans for Telecommunications.
The IPMA may want to become involved in the planning process and help DIS develop policy in this area.
Communication Direction - Where is the state headed relative to communication? This issue will have high visibility at the legislative level and questions will be asked about the business roles of the public (state) and private sector.
Sharing of Information Resources- Currently there is a duplication of information resources in the various state agencies. A question DIS must address is whether or not the state should treat its information as a corporate resource.
Information and Planning Approval Cycle - DIS and OFM will work together to look at agency DP budget requests before they go to the legislature. Two related issues needing further exploration are: exactly how this will be carried out and how this will be staffed.
Agency Performance Assessment- Similar issues as noted above need to be addressed here.
The above is a partial listing of challenges DIS faces. The IPMA can be a very valuable resource to DIS.
Business Meeting
There was no old business. There is an ISB Meeting November 24, 1987 at the Tyee.
Darrel is working on a way to give DIS input from the IPMA. As things firm up, he will report back to the full group.
The meeting adjourned at 1:15.
Treasurer's Report
Checking $8,052.41
Savings $ ...........
Alphabet Soup
Submitted by: Tara Wolff
Acronyms abound in our lives these days, especially for those of us in the Information processing profession. We have pulled together this list for those of you who are curious about just how savvy you are in the world of information processing acronyms. To make it even more of a challenge we've included two fakes. The real answers are on the bottom of the page. Please feel free to submit creative responses to fake acronyms to Kathy Marston (MS: PE-11) newsletter editor.
IBM
LAN
ISDN
DBMS
JCL
APY
SPSS
PC
PSF
ASCII
DOS
CPU
Answers:
International Business Machines
Local Area Network
Integrated Services Digital Network
Data Base Management System
Job Control Language
Fake
Statistical Package for Social Sciences
Personal Computer
Fake
American Standard Code for Information Interchange
Disk Operating System
Central Processing Unit
Those of you who got 10 out of 10 or 100% are all invited to submit tougher tests for the acronym superstars!
One For the Winner's Circle
By: John Flanagan, DIS Planning Div.
The Department of Transportation recently completed a major project involving the installation of microcomputers in their district offices. The purpose of this "Project Engineer's Office - Office Automation Project", was to provide these remote locations with local engineering and word processing support. The project began in 1985, and was both large and ambitious. DOT estimated it would take 2 years, have an overall cost of $3.2 million, and return the agency a benefit of up to 5 percent in cost reductions.
The bottom line of this DOT project is that is was completed six months early, almost $1 million under budget, and the anticipated benefits are stacking up at 10 percent, or 100 percent higher than anticipated.
DOT does have a few lessons to share as a result of this undertaking which may have a familiar ring to many of you who have major projects underway:
One of the principal difficulties of the project was the training of staff at the district offices. Turnover of personnel in those locations, as well as rapidly changing technology, complicated the job. Because the effort was underestimated, they are now considering an increase of staff for on-going training and support.
As a result of providing the district office personnel with micro computers, a new and difficult to control "demand" has been generated. The users desire to increase the applications available to them, on the micro computers, creates a challenge for DOT's MIS which is difficult to stay "on top" of. They are still studying this one, with an eye toward being able to better satisfy this new user demand in the future.
Congratulations to the troops at WSDOT for an exemplary project.