HomeMy WebLinkAbout1999-11-08 City Council (9)City of Palo Alto
City Manager’s Report
TO:HONORABLE CITY COUNCIL
FROM:CITY MANAGER DEPARTMENT: UTILITIES
DATE:NOVEMBER 8, 1999 CMR:411:99
SUBJECT:UPDATE ON UTILITIES CUSTOMER INFORMATION SYSTEM
This is an informational report and no Council action is required.
BACKGROUND
In 1997, the City Council approved a contract with Systems and Computer Technology
Corporation (SCT) for acquisition and implementation of a Customer Information System
(CIS). On October 4, 1999 Council approved an amendment to the SCT contract to provide
additional SCT resources to supplement City staff and ensure that a Y2K compliant CIS is
operational before December 31, 1999 (CMR:363:99). This report indicates the current
status of the project, accomplishments in recent weeks, and efforts underway to "go-live" on
November 15, 1999 with the CIS. In addition, a status report is provided on a parallel effort
to remediate the current billing system (CUBIS).
DISCUSSION
Last month, staff identified five critical areas that required SCT assistance before going live
with the CIS. The table below indicates the status and progress in each of these areas.
1. Data Conversion Conversion iterations will continue until go-live, which is
projected for November 15. To date, 99.6 percent of the
accounts have been successfully validated and converted
from CUBIS ~o the CIS.
2. Job Process Testing In progress. Job processes such as charge calculation,
payment balance, and delinquency are undergoing and
passing tests. Tests continue on a larger number of accounts
to validate the jobs.
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3. System Testing
.......4. Key Account Testing
End-User Training
Continuing daily with very good results. System testing on
the production server began October 25, 1999. All key
billing processes are run on converted data on a daily basis
until go-live. As a result, issues are identified, investigated,
and typically corrected within 24 hours.
Key account testing was successful after correcting a number
of issues that surfaced during the test data phase. Key
account testing will continue on recently converted data.
Complete. SCT trained 42 City staff during 4 weeks of
October.
For the month of September, SCT invoiced the City approximately $44,000 for services. For
the month of October, staff estimates the charges from SCT will be approximately $160,000.
With availability of SCT staff resources on-site to address issues quickly, a number of
important milestones have been met. On October 25, 1999, SCT completed development of
the CIS software application for Palo Alto. Another important milestone was reached on
October 25, 1999: the production server on which the CIS application Ilms was installed and
configured. With the server in production, the CIS has been undergoing key system testing
on a daily basis. The testing is demonstrating that revenues are in balance, bills are calculated
correctly, and adjustments and payments are being posted accurately.
The CIS (SCT) must pass specific information to software applications developed by other
companies. The connection between these diverse applications and the CIS is referred to
as an interface. The applications include cash remittance (Standard Register the developer),
cash receipts (CORE the developer), financial and accounting (IFAS), meter reading (ITRON
the developer) and the bill print application (Group l Software the developer). The
coordination and technical work to make this integration happen has been on-going for many
months. While the Standard Register interface has not been accomplished to date, it is
expected to be done this week. All other interfaces have been successfully integrated with
the CIS.
A related but critical aspect of the CIS is the printing of bill statements. Group 1 is under
contract to design a utility bill statement that will resemble the current statement to the extent
feasible. It is anticipated that some non-critical information will not appear on the new bills.
For example, a customer’s credit rating will not be identified and the 12-month utility history
ot~ average cost per day will not be shown initially. Group 1 is near completion of the bill
statement. However, any significant problem has the potential to delay cut-over from
CUBIS and go-live on the CIS.
The current goal is to go-hve with the CIS on November 15. Staffwill meet this goal unless
a major issue arises that cannot be corrected quickly. To date, no major issues have surfaced
CMR:411:99 Page 2 of 3
which have not been.able to be resolved within 24 hours by SCT and staff. Staff and SCT
remain committed to the implementation of this project and remain confident that the CIS
will be implemented before Y2K issues impact CUBIS on December 31, 1999.
Nonetheless, to reduce Y2K risk exposure with respect to utility billing, the primary backup
plan to the CIS is for a staff programmer to work with a consultant to remediate CUBIS. To
date a list of problem areas have been identified within the CUBIS software application and
in hardware and software systems that support CUBIS. While some of these problems have
been corrected or resolved, others are currently under investigation. For example, some of
the CUBIS software programs have been rewritten to correct the Y2K date issue. The next
step is to test these programs. Until all potential problems have been corrected and tested,
staff cannot state with assurance that CUBIS and its supporting systems, including the bill
print software, are Y2K compliant. Efforts will continue to remediate CUBIS until the CIS
is implemented.
PREPARED BY:Randy Baldschun, Assistant Director of Utilities
DEPARTMENT HEAD:
DEPARTMENT HEAD:
CITY MANAGER APPROVAL:
of Utilities
CARL YEATS /
Director of Adn.)~istrative Services
( /
~i.~] Manager ~
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