Abraxas IT services and Cape Town city council strengthen weak links in Year 2000 chain

With the Year 2000 round the corner, numerous Councils have recently come under the spotlight as the weak link in the year 2000 chain. The Cape Town City Council, however, undertook a stringent Year 2000 programme to ensure complete compliance.

Since 1998, Abraxas IT Services Cape Town, a member of the Advanced Software Technologies-Abraxas (AST-A) Group, has partnered with the Cape Town City Council on a critical part of this programme. This involved the mainframe-based financial systems, which included modules such as payroll costing, insurance, cheques and stores.

Abraxas IT Services once again used it`s automated Year 2000 factory in Cape Town. This facility has the capacity to analyse programme code at high speed to establish the impact and the Y2K compliancy status of the programmes. The factory can then rectify problems automatically, using the automated Y2K toolset. The facility can also be used to double-check code which has already been remediated.

"We were selected by the Cape Town City Council because of our capacity to identify, rectify and test the code quicker and more accurately than other alternatives," says Mark Cooper of Abraxas IT Services.

According to Abe Mbulawa, Director of IT Services at the CTCC, "Abraxas IT Services have played a vital role in ensuring our success in the key mainframe systems area. They have been willing to work along side DITS to achieve Y2K compliance and to manage this process for us. They have been very professional, open and cost conscious throughout the project."

Abraxas IT Services managed the project team, which was comprised of staff from Abraxas IT Services and the Council`s Department of IT Services.

"We brought to the table our extensive knowledge of large migrations projects, our Y2K project methodology, specialised Y2K testing tools and experience," continues Cooper. "This complemented the Council`s knowledge of their own systems."

The Directorate of Information Technology Services (DITS), a department within the Cape Town City Council, prioritised which systems required checking and testing first.

The critical financial systems which were identified by DITS, were analysed and rectified in the Abraxas Year 2000 Factory, tested and successfully implemented back into the production environment before the critical date of 30 June 1999, the Council`s year-end.

The remaining less crucial systems have all been successfully implemented back into the production environment after remediation.

As part of the project, all systems are being subjected to transcentury testing. This means that the systems data is aged to reflect conditions as at a pre-defined future date, and system tests are run with this future date set as the current date in the operating system. This phased testing plan is in progress. This will ensure that all systems will be tested for operational accuracy as at 1 January 2000 before the end of this year.

Further future testing will be conducted on an ongoing basis, with the plan providing for future date testing as at 29 February 2000 and 1 March 2000 to be completed during February 2000.

As part of its customer-satisfaction focus, Abraxas IT Services will be part of the Council`s standby team over the century rollover and are also making an ongoing contribution to the Council`s integrated corporate wide Y2K contingency planning exercise.

Abraxas IT Services has also been involved with various other council`s Y2K rectifications in other regions. Abraxas was awarded the tender for and has successfully completed the critical systems inventory for 110 Local Authorities in the Cape Region and also for the entire Gauteng area. In addition, Abraxas was chosen to partner the Durban Metropolitan Transitional Council`s Y2K programme from inception.