 A "Decade+" of Computer System Conversions and Client/Server Implementations Westchester County presently operates two real-time, on-line financial and payroll systems networked for the Westchester County departments. This chronological summary explains some of the upgrades and improvements implemented in the last few years. (Some hyperlinks will open new windows. Maximize them to read the contents, then close the new window to return to this page). 1991 - 1992 In March 1991 Westchester County formed 
a conversion team
composed of workers from the departments of Finance, Information Technology,
Personnel, the Medical Center, and others to begin implementing a new on-line, FLSA compliant
payroll system called Government Human Resource System. In June of 1991 consultants from American Management Systems, Inc. and EDP Temps, Inc. also were added and together they were successful in going live with the system in March of 1992. At that time, this single database ran on an IBM 3090 mainframe computer based at 148 Martine Avenue in White Plains, NY and served the Westchester County departments, the Westchester Community College, and the Westchester Medical Center. The able talents of County workers from the Finance and Personnel Departments were utilized to conduct many training sessions to both clerical and supervisory departmental payroll workers in anticipation of the live date. The "hands-on" training sessions were at the IT training center at 112 E Post Rd in White Plains, NY. 1993 - 1994 In March of 1993
a new
conversion team was formed
to ascertain needs, discuss, design, and plan for the conversion from the existing
off-line financial system to a real-time system. Again, some very qualified
County workers were drafted from the departments of Finance, Information
Technology, Mental Health, Public Works, and Budget to work with the consultants
from AMS, Inc. and EDP Temps, Inc. Team workers from both the Finance and Information Technology departments were instrumental in conducting over 5 months of early training sessions for approx. 400 users from all 35 County departments and the Westchester Medical Center. These sessions were conducted prior to the Sept. 1994 live date. To facilitate their familiarity with the new system, the trainees were given access to a "test/practice" database region which duplicated the production database. They were able to access this practice region from their offices for both practice transactions and information inquiries on the test database. After much work and very long hours by the team, including working 7 days per week for several weeks, the new Local Government Financial System went live on September 12, 1994. It also operated on the IBM 3090 mainframe. Two financial databases served the County and the Medical Center entities. Users were mandated to utilize on-line documents for the purpose of creating or modifying budgets from day 1. More on-line documents, such as those for revenue transactions, would eventually be phased into use to replace paper based transactions. 1995 A major policy change was implemented in late 1995 by mandating the use of the on-line Vendor Payment Voucher in place of paper voucher documents for all 35 County departments. (The Payment Voucher processes payments for contractors, vendors, and most expenses). This was the last step in utilizing the on-line capabilities of the financial system. All documents for budget control, grants, revenue, capital projects, and expenses were now being created and processed on-line by all Westchester County departments. Work was begun in mid 1995 to implement an integrated purchasing system. AMS consultants and County IT, Medical Center, Bureau of Purchase, and Finance staff began learning and understanding the purchasing system. At the end of 1995 our financial and payroll systems were serving approximately 800 users. 1996 In June of 1996 a third County financial database entity went live when the Westchester Community College was also converted to the financial System. Again, the talents and knowledge of Finance Department staff were exploited to conduct 3 months of anticipatory training to college staff. County IT , Finance, consultant staff, and College financial managers together developed plans, financial code libraries, budget control methods, and other important database considerations. With the vast experience gained in 1994 from converting the County departments, the college successfully implemented a 100% on-line document policy from day 1. The County purchasing system implementation, as well as some preliminary work towards implementing a graphical user interface version (Advantage Desktop) of the payroll and financial systems was halted. These vital tasks were aborted due to contractual, labor, and budgetary issues; employee layoffs; and the resulting impact of civil service rules when privatization of the County IT dept was initiated. As of the end of 1996, approximately 900 users were served by the financial and payroll systems. 1998 In 1998, after final adjudication due to several legal court victories championed by the affected workers, the County Department of Information technology was created as a distinct department and a new vigor in moving forward with delayed but required year 2000 issues was embraced. The department was again staffed with County of Westchester employees. Work commenced on catching up with modernization of systems and hardware that was delayed for approximately 17 months. In 1998 the Westchester Medical Center was given its own separate payroll database application. This action was in conjunction with commencement of the agreement for separating management of the Medical Center from the County government. In a separate task, the IT department vigorously commenced replacing hundreds of user PCs with new Unisys or Dell Windows 95 or Windows NT computers which would be year 2000 compliant. Each user would receive MS Office97, Outlook98, and Internet Explorer for web access. 1999 In May of 1999 the newer Advantage Financial System was installed on the IBM 3090 mainframe. The newer Advantage Financial System replaced LGFS and was ready for the calendar change to the year 2000 (i.e. Y2K compliant). Westchester had also operated a Unisys 2200 mainframe for many years. This system operated the Unisys OFISLink email/word processing, the MAPPER database, and many other COBOL operations. Mainframe computers, which trace some of their development back to 1947 in Connecticut, require dedicated computer room cooling and fire control systems. Mainframes are very costly to operate. In conjunction with the task of insuring that all computer
systems were ready for the year 2000 change, as well as to eliminate old
technology, it was decided to convert away from the costly mainframes to the
modern and much less expensive client server environment. Basically, a server is a large, powerful computer with
both redundant power supplies and file storing hard drives, several CPU
processors, and very large amounts of memory. The server stores and processes the
financial and payroll data for both the Advantage Financial (accounting) and the
Advantage HR (payroll) systems. Servers operate in normal offices without need
of special climate control systems. The client PCs are connected via a LAN (Local Area Network) in the department's office building. In turn, LANs are connected via a Wide Area Network which connects all County buildings to the server complex. In August of 1999 the integrated Extended Purchasing
System (EPS) module of Advantage Financial was ready for all County departments.
It was made ready for the Community College users soon after. As was the case before, County Finance Department staff were
required to understand the EPS system, guide the programmers, learn the required
functionality, and eventually instruct its use to all departmental users. Direct
visits to the departments were made by the traveling EPS instructors from the
Finance Department. Related to the conversion to the UNIX version, the check printers also were upgraded to new laser printers. In the effort to save printing costs, most hard copy financial and payroll reports were eliminated and replaced by the use of PC client or browser software that allows retrieving images of reports. In June of 2000, the Westchester County Finance Department, with IT assistance, started
utilizing Intranet based electronic forms for certain functions. The Intranet
refers to the web pages, files, images, and information which are only available
to the employees using a PC in their work office connected to the employer's
network and servers. As mentioned on the main page of the Finance Department internet web, greater efficiencies will be achieved in 2001 by utilizing Price Agreements for more of the purchases of our County government. We now utilize our employee intranet to provide updated summaries of established Price Agreements. Using these price agreements, any authorized user in all departments may quickly create an on-line "PG" purchase order. Vendor bidding, waiting for vendor price responses, and re-creating of purchase orders by our Bureau of Purchase is eliminated. With PG orders, the Bureau of Purchase simply prints the order created by the using department, signs it, and quickly sends it to the vendor. As of March 2001, the departments
of Finance and Information Technology are now working to migrate the
financial and payroll systems to the newer AMS Advantage Desktop
versions.
Advantage Financial Desktop and Advantage HR Desktop utilize the Windows
environment to streamline business functions for many County expense,
revenue, and payroll transactions. This requires that each successive
release version of the AMS software be installed and made fully
operational to migrate to the latest graphical environment versions.
With all the effort of the past
decade, and especially since 1998, Westchester government now has
technologies and software which are equal to or better than most major
corporations. In December of 2004 the Westchester Community College, as part of its autonomy, installed their own financial system from PeopleSoft. In 2004 the Westchester County Finance Department reviewed and
evaluated new financial systems from Oracle, SAP, CGI-AMS, People Soft, and
others. The new systems are all web/browser based and offer certain
features above the text/emulator based system in use since Sept 1994. In April of 2005, the Westchester Community College, as part of its autonomy, installed their own employee payroll system from PeopleSoft. For Westchester County departments, as per the
effort for the financial system, a similar endeavor and user involvement was
exercised for the purpose of upgrading the payroll system in use since March of
1992.
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