April 20, 1999
To:Strategic Policies and Priorities Committee
From:Commissioner Corporate Services
Subject:Year 2000 Priority One Business Functions Status Report March/April 1999
Purpose:
The Year 2000 Business Continuity Plan Status Report (April 1999) outlines the following
information as requested by Council at its November 1998 meeting:
(i)Status report of each priority 1Year 2000 function;
(ii)Status report on the ABC's and their state of readiness;
(iii)Status report on expenditures for priority 1 Year 2000 functions; and
(iv)Change requests.
Funding Sources:
No funding is required at this time.
Recommendations:
It is recommended that:
(1)this report be received for information;
(2)the Strategic Policies and Priorities Committee refer this report to Council for its
information.
Comments:
Communication Update:
The Communication Plan was approved by Council at its April meeting. The plan outlined the
requirement to establish a community liaison to act as a contact point for community groups
wishing to prepare their communities. A statement of work has since been developed and
work is progressing.
The City's Year 2000 team has participated in numerous public forums. These included
sessions held at the St. Lawrence Centre, Trinity Church and the Bellefair United Church. In
addition, presentations have been made to the Canadian Bankers Association and the Greater
Toronto Services Board. The Internet site is now available on the City of Toronto site.
Status report on Priority One business functions:
Contingency Plan:
Three separate reports have been documented for each Department. One of the reports
examines the critical project milestones and the dates set against each of them. Projects are
evaluated on whether they are making "sustainable" progress toward completion. This is used
to track and plot the Risk Assessment graph maintained by the Project Office. This is
evaluated on a monthly basis.
Each of the Risk Managers has examined and engaged each department with the need for any
improvements. At this time the Project Office is satisfied that the appropriate effort is under
way to achieve this.
A lot of time has been devoted to define the Year 2000 Project contingency plan scope and
each Commissioner has been asked to review this report and to approve it for their
department.
Departmental Critical One Business Functions:
In November 1998 the City of Toronto's Year 2000 program outlined critical milestones for
the City's Priority 1 Year 2000 initiatives. These milestones included September 1998 for the
completion of the inventory and October 1998 for the completion of the assessment. All City
Departments met both of these objectives. The upcoming milestone is the completion of all
remedy, which includes activities such as code conversion, system upgrades and system
replacement, by the end of April 1999. The next critical phase is the testing phase whereby
each Department verifies that the solutions implemented continue to meet their business
requirements and functions properly through critical dates such as January 1st, 2000 and
February 29th, 2000. The testing phase is targeted for completion by the end of September
1999. By October 1999 the objective is to have all solutions back in operation in preparation
for the millennium change. Each Commissioner will be expected to approve the verification
results and to recommend moving the solution into operation. This will demonstrate their
satisfaction with the work conducted by their Department to ensure business as usual on
January 1st, 2000 and through the millennium.
Numerous priority 1 business functions are currently projected to be year 2000 ready ahead of
the City's milestones. These include the majority of public health and safety services such as
Water Supply, Water Pollution Control, Solid Waste Management, Transportation
Management, Traffic Control, Ambulance Services and Fire Services. The Year 2000 Project
Office, the Steering Committee and each Commissioner are monitoring the progress of each
business case to make sure target dates are met. You will find in Appendix 1 the status
summary of each business case including the percentage complete.
In an effort to further reduce risk, the Year 2000 program office is working with each
Commissioner to determine strategies for moving up the implementation date for critical
business functions to ensure maximum completion by September 30, 1999. These revised
completion dates will be reported to Strategic Policies and Priorities Committee in May 1999.
Status Report on Agencies, Boards and Commissions (ABCs):
The ABC Management Team delivered an "ABC Support Report" to the Year 2000 Steering
Committee on March 24th, 1999. This report, which has been accepted, contains the processes
by which Departmental Project Managers can establish City responsibilities for ABC's Year
2000 preparedness. The processes ensure that ABC support decisions will be made selectively
yet consistently, with appropriate knowledge and consideration.
The ABC Management Team has communicated the decision processes by:
(i)presenting at the March 29th Project Manager Information Session;
(ii)meeting with Departmental Project Managers or their designates for every Department
that has associated ABCs, and reviewing the decision processes with them;
(iii)distributing background information to all Commissioners to ensure they are aware of
their associated ABCs in accordance with the report adopted by Council, and to offer
assistance by answering questions and addressing concerns;
(iv)scheduling information sessions with the appropriate ABCs to ensure key players have a
full understanding of the City's role with regard to year 2000 preparedness.
Status report from Toronto Police:
The following summaries have been prepared for each critical area of the Police's Year 2000
planning and remediation to provide the most recent accomplishments:
Emergency Preparedness:
A draft operational plan is being prepared and will be available for internal distribution to
executive police management by May 31, 1999. Aspects of this plan will be reported to the
Police Services Board and Council by the end of June 1999.
Information Processing:
The Service remains on track in converting and testing its information systems in keeping
with system A-D prioritization. The status is as follows:
(a)Priority A: 95 percent of the remediation work for applications in this category is
complete. They have not all been implemented as several are dependent on the deployment of
the NT desktop operating system which will take place over the next five months;
(b)Priority B: 5 of the 22 systems in this category are complete; the rest are expected to meet
their target date;
(c)Priority C: 5 of the 30 systems in this category are complete; the rest are expected to meet
their target date; and
(d)Priority D: 4 of the 13 systems in this category are complete; the rest are expected to
meet their target date. System completion in this category is higher than first anticipated due
to system enhancements related to the NT operating system rollout.
System owners have begun work to develop information processing contingency plans to
enable the Service to continue the collection, recording and storage of information in the event
of system failures.
Facilities and Equipment:
Progress is continuing in preparing a list of Service assets, which may or may not be Y2K
compliant. Remediation plans and funding requirements will be identified by June 1999 in
keeping with priority A-D classifications.
Y2K Leadership:
The first meeting of the Police Executive Y2K Steering Committee is to be scheduled by the
end of April 1999.
Members of the Service are continuing to work diligently to address Y2K challenges to ensure
their preparedness to deliver high quality police services in the new millennium.
Status report from Toronto Hydro:
Getting the power to Hydro's distribution system is a big part of the equation that is going to
determine whether the lights stay on when all the clocks in Toronto strike midnight on
January 1, 2000. Judging from the success of the large-scale time shift test in central and west
Toronto, Ontario Hydro's efforts to secure the supply of electricity to Toronto Hydro appear to
be working.
To prepare for the other part of the equation distributing the power to their customers, Toronto
Hydro is putting forward a huge corporate effort to ensure the distribution system is up and
running on January 1, 2000. First of all, Toronto Hydro got a leg up on its Y2K readiness
through the integration process by eliminating systems that were not ready. The Hydro's Year
2000 office and Toronto Hydro's IT experts are working closely with staff responsible for the
systems to make sure they are Y2K ready. Jointly, every system and every single piece of
equipment throughout the organization have been looked at. Priorities have been established
and they have assessed the Y2K readiness of those items that affect Hydro's corporate goals.
Hydro's target is to have all critical systems tested and ready by June 30, 1999. Steps have
been identified to be followed to remediate and test the items that are not Y2K ready. A lot of
effort is going into testing. Hydro is not content to sit back and assume the systems will work.
Year 2000 also happens to be a leap year, and there are other dates that might pose a problem
- like 9/9/99- so Hydro is setting their clocks ahead to see if the systems work through those
dates.
Almost all critical items will be tested, with only those systems for which Y2K readiness is
firmly guaranteed by vendors or manufacturers and backed up by accepted, documented test
being exempt. The Hydro team is tracking progress on critical systems and providing help
wherever it is needed to meet its deadline. If something is not ready, it is fixed and tested all
over again.
Although Hydro expects a smooth transition to the year 2000, Hydro still has to plan for even
the most unlikely events. Toronto Hydro is starting the process of Y2K contingency planning
to prepare for any potential problems that may arise on December 31, 1999. Most contingency
plans consider a single issue as the emergency and assume that all other facilities and
resources are fully operational. Hydro's Y2K contingency planning considers all sorts of
reasonable combinations assuming that services and facilities may not be fully available.
Specific scenarios with Hydro, the City of Toronto, essential service providers and other
stakeholders are being discussed. The task is to figure out how Hydro would respond if any of
those worst-case scenarios materialized.
No one can guarantee Hydro will be 100% problem free as the new century approaches, but
everything possible is being worked on to ensure lights stay on January 1, 2000.
Status report on TTC, March 28, 1999:
Summary:
Project plans to remediate business applications, technology infrastructure and embedded
systems are in place, and detailed plans have been integrated into a master plan. Integrated
databases have been built to track the inventory of applications to be remediated, embedded
systems, as well as the technical infrastructure.
Current remediation efforts for critical applications and embedded systems are expected to be
completed by September 1999. Exceptions to this include a small number of replacement
business applications, such as Scheduling, Timeline, and Engineering Document Control.
Individual project plans are being tracked closely, and no critical delays are expected.
Contingency and continuity planning is well under way, to accommodate both IT application
failures and external problems related to power supply, communications, water etc. which will
significantly impact service. A Contingency Task Force has been established within TTC with
senior representation from each Branch.
A communications strategy has been developed, and an Intranet site to disseminate Y2K
information to TTC employees is nearing completion.
Progress:
Details on progress by group, project, and project phase are represented in the TTC's Y2K
Progress Chart attached (see attachment 2). The chart represents the seven major phases of the
TTC's Year 2000 project: Initiation, Inventory, Assessment, Remediation or Replacement,
Testing, Implementation, and Post Implementation. The Y2K Compliant Date represents the
forecast Implementation or Production completion date. The percent complete is based on the
amount of work accomplished.
A number of critical applications have recently been certified and put into production. These
include the Metropass Discount Plan, the Ticket Order Processing System, and the Delay Logs
application, which monitors service delays. As well, the voice systems used by the
Commission have been Y2K certified.
Status report on the City of Toronto's expenditures:
Attached is a status report on the $149.6 million allocated to the Y2K project to remedy all
Priority 1 business functions. As of March 31, 1999, a total of $26 million has been
committed or spent. For March 1999, $4.7 million has been committed. The majority of this
expenditure is again for resources, software licenses, hardware, servers, and network
equipment. See Attachment 3.
Change requests:
Facilities:
Facilities and Real Estate requested that each department be given the ability to exclude
non-essential items from the physical inventory at the discretion of the Department
responsible for them. The excluded items should be those that are not required to perform the
essential business of the Department. In the event of a failure of these items, the Department
currently responsible for maintenance of the item will be responsible for its repair and
replacement. This was approved by the Y2K Steering Committee at its April 8, 1999, meeting.
Corporate Services:
Document Management - Legal Department:
Funding in the amount of $174,150.00 was requested to hire a Project Manager to manage the
Y2K efforts at a detail level on behalf of Legal, specifically for document management. Tasks
also include business analysis, application architecture, and co-ordination efforts for Legal.
This has been approved by the Y2K Steering Committee at its April 8, 1999, meeting.
Legal Y2K File Management Projects:
Funding in the amount of $183,600.00 was requested to hire an external Project Manager to
ensure project management continuity until all Year 2000 systems solutions are ready. This
has been approved by the Y2K Steering Committee at its April 8, 1999 meeting.
Finance:
Payroll and Benefits:
Changes were approved to the Payroll and Benefits business continuity strategy for the former
Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto and the former City of Scarborough payroll. The
changes include the upgrade and year 2000 testing of the existing Time Entry System (TES)
and the Cyborg system. The previous strategy of rerunning payroll tapes for three months
proved unacceptable for such a sustained period of time. It is however acceptable as a
short-term contingency solution. No additional funding is required.
Works and Emergency Services:
Transportation:
Funds in the amount of $78,645.00 was requested from the Y2K contingency fund to support
the Y2K testing effort for the mainframe applications used by Transportation Services. While
these applications were initially assessed as Critical 2 or 3, upon review, each of the major
applications actually meet the parameters for Criticality 1 ranking. As the City-wide
mainframe project is already undertaking remediation on these applications, it is essential that
the Departmental Year 2000 project be able to design and execute test plans to ensure
business readiness. These include Permit Parking and Right-of-Way applications. This has
been approved by the Y2K Steering Committee at its April 8, 1999, meeting.
City Wide Initiatives:
Desktop:
The City is currently using a number of different e-mail (messaging) systems, all based upon
proprietary, often incompatible and non-year 2000 ready technology. This makes effective
communication between systems and remote sites extremely difficult and problem prone.
It is necessary to standardize on one technological platform for messaging and workflow in
order to achieve Year 2000 readiness and thereby enable business continuity in Year 2000. In
addition to ensuring business continuity, all users will benefits from the functionality these
products can provide. The adoption of one product will enable corporate-wide use of calendar
management, setting up meetings, automated workflow, and document transfer. As well,
remote and mobile users will be fully supported so that ubiquitous access to the system will be
possible, regardless of where the user is logging on. This will facilitate future moves of staff
and any work-from-home or hoteling initiatives. Support costs should diminish as the older
systems are put out of service.
One hundred and twenty-six companies were invited to submit proposals. An evaluation team,
consisting of representatives from the Police Services Board, Metro Zoo, Purchasing and
Materials Management and the Information and Technology Division, used the evaluation
criteria and the ranking mechanism identified in the Request for Proposal. They selected BEI
Metastorm and their bid partner DTM Information Group as the successful proponent for the
implementation of the Groupwise messaging product and a companion workflow product.
Their bid ranked highest in the evaluation and presented the solution with the lowest cost and
risk to the City. The Manager, Fair Wage and Labour Trades office has reported favourably on
the firm recommended. The funds were budgeted as part of the Year 2000 Desktop initiative.
This change request was approved by the Year 2000 Steering Committee.
Conclusion:
The City of Toronto's Year 2000 readiness program is moving forward as anticipated. Council
will continue to receive progress reports as requested.
Contact:
Lana Viinamae, Director Year 2000.
