Maricopa County Community Colleges and the Year 2000

What is the Year 2000 problem?

As of January 1, 2000 each computer program that processes information using a date field may fail to perform calculations correctly. The potential problem can occur when year fields are recorded as two digits instead of four. In fact, "2000" looks like "00" to some programs and can be mistaken by the program as "1900." The result can be incorrect mathematical calculations when, for example, an individual's age is determined to be a negative number or a student fee payment due is considered to be delinquent because payment was due in 1900.

What are the universally accepted Y2K solutions and practices?

There are three basic methods to resolve the Y2K bug problem.

Discontinue usage
Replace the system
Correction

Discontinuance suggests you really don't need the service and functions provided by the system. This is generally not an accepted solution, but should be considered as the first solution of choice. Replace the system is an excellent solution, especially if this is in line with your overall strategic goals. Purchasing and movement a later version as supplied by your vendor or movement to a new product and vendor should be your second choice, if appropriate. Correction is the last choice and is often seen as the only feasible option based on several factors. For more on corrections, see the attached DATE CORRECTION METHODS document.

Maricopa's Year 2000 Teams

In order to address this issue and ensure that Maricopa County Community College District's enterprise-wide systems and services are ready to move into the new century, Jim DeVere has been identified as the MCCCD Year 2000 Project Director. In addition, each college has identified the following person as the Year 2000 project leader to ensure its individual college-based systems and services are Year 2000 ready.

Year 2000 Project Leader	Maricopa Community College
Jack Clegg	Phoenix College
KC Hundere	Glendale Community College
Jose Candanedo	GateWay Community College
Bill DeHaan	Mesa Community College
Sharon Blanton	Scottsdale Community College
Ed Kelty	Rio Salado College
Sandra Mares	South Mountain Community College
Victor Navarro	Chandler-Gilbert Community College
Tom Russo	Paradise Valley Community College
Patti Barrington	Estrella Mountain Community College

What is being done for you?

Maricopa's purchasing department and college fiscal agents will only approve purchases of Year 2000 ready products.

Both the district office and the individual college Year 2000 teams are using a similar process to achieve Year 2000 readiness for their respective areas of responsibility. During awareness, phase I, the goal is to communicate to everyone as to the nature of the Year 2000 problem and gather a complete inventory of all systems and services which store the year as two digits instead of four digits. Impact Analysis, phase II, is analyzing the potential impact and developing detailed plans for correction, replacement or discontinuance of the system or service. Subsequent steps vary based upon contents of the selected plan.

District Information Technologies Services (ITS) responsibility is to ensure all MCCCD enterprise-wide systems and services are Year 2000 ready. Budget Development System (BDS), Human Resource System (HRS), Oracle Government Financial System (OGF) and Student Information System (SIS) are a few of the MCCCD enterprise-wide systems being made year 2000 ready by ITS.

The scope of responsibility for each college in the discovery and eradication of potential Year 2000 hardware, software and network issues includes the following. This scope is inclusive of the main college campus and any remote sites under the college's administration.

workstations in computer labs, classrooms and other common use areas

workstations in faculty, staff and administrative offices
localized servers running non-districtwide software applications
on-campus networking devices
college specific extracts or reports from SIS and/or other administrative applications currently being supported by the District ITS division
embedded systems which may be unique to the college (e.g. fax machines, VCRs, and other date embedded systems)

What is Year 2000 Compliance?

In general, MCCCD is using the following criteria to define "Year 2000 Compliance" for its enterprise-wide systems and services. Similar criteria have been defined at each college for the college-based systems and services.

The systems and services will accurately process date data beyond Dec 31, 1999. All calculations such as comparing, sorting, computations and leap year calculations will be correct, when the system and services are used in accordance with the user documentation.

What should you do?

You have already started by reading this article. Now, if you have not done so already, you should begin to assess the impact Year 2000 may have on your individual workday activities. Contact your supervisor, manager or Year 2000 Director for any assistance. A good starting point is to visit the WEB sites for MCCCD Year 2000 at www.dist.maricopa.edu/y2k or www.year2000.com, which contains extensive information on Year 2000 activities.