Maricopa's Loan Management System has been made Y2K ready as of October 1999. Extensive correction and testing efforts were contributed to this project success by Eileen Gawin, Debbie Wiedmair, Tom Nicol, Gary Nusbaum, Craig Dyer, Becky Ripley, Jason Pociask, Carol Clocksin, Bryan Ferguson, Norm Dye, Randall Byrd, Jim DeVere, and Ravel contract programmers.

LMS Background: MCD's Loan Management System (LMS) is a series of programs used to track processing for GSL (was Stafford), Nursing (Federal), and MCD Institutional loans. LMS was purchased from Information Associates in 1983. Subsequently, SCT purchased and currently maintains the LMS software nationally. Maricopa has applied no changes to our LMS and have discontinued system maintenance with SCT. As such, MCD does not have the most current version of LMS as available from the vendor.

LMS is maintained at the District office as a single location for all district-wide student loan and debt information. LMS interfaces with federal systems by processing the NDSL tapes provided every 3 months (approximately). In addition, LMS collects all past due debt information from the LMS files and SIS files to create a daily district-wide debt file which is used by MCD's SIS. In addition, twice a year, LMS interfaces with SIS to update student financial hold flags stored in SIS master files.

Initial quotes from the LMS vendor indicated a cost in excess of $125,000 to make LMS Y2K ready. MCD chose to make LMS Y2K ready with MCD's ITS staff with assistance from RAVEL contract programming services. Extensive use of Ravel's Y2K tool set is being used for the corrective action. MCD has initiated Y2K readiness on LMS by using a "field expansion" technique which expands all 2-digit years to a 4-digit year.

LMS uses ZSS 89.1 but was moved to ZSS Plus as part of the Y2K readiness corrections. In addition, LMS has 14 files, 137 COBOL programs, 61 cobol program libraries which were corrected. 14 file conversion programs were written.

For additional information regarding LMS and its Y2K readiness status, contact the LMS technical product manager (Gary Nusbaum), the functional product manager (Eileen Gawin), or MCD's Y2K project leader (Jim DeVere).