Analysis and Evaluation of the Data Processing Needs for the City of South Bend

摘要

This study was designed to assess the data processing needs for the City of South Bend, Ind., and to make appropriate recommendations for a system. Remarks about high cost, inefficient operation, low quality of service, unreliability of the system, and little or no user participation have been expressed about the present electronic data processing system (EDP) of the South Bend Community School Corp. One objective of this study is to document what this system produces and to present a macro view of the total system, as it appears that there is little coordination and communication between the user(s) and the service center. For the study, the city is identified as three large subsystems: water works system, policy system, and financial - payroll system. Major findings show that: (1) a valid contract does not seem to exist between the School Corporation and the City of South Bend; (2) the actual costs incurred by the data center are allocated to the different users based on an estimated evaluation of the percentage of work done for each user; (3) there was an increase in total data processing costs of 27 percent in 1976 over 1975, and the projected costs for 1977 show an increase of 13.4 percent over 1976; this increase seems to result from operations aside from any apparent hardware or software changes; (4) the city has little or no control over costs or operations, and there is a definite lack of liaison between the user (city) and the data center; (5) considerable savings could be made if the terminals could be reduced to two, and the present level of efficiency could be maintained by rearranging the office layout; (6) using microfiche could reduce costs and also eliminate disk storage for the water works on - line; (7) optical scanning could substantially increase the efficiency of meter readers, as more meters can be read at the same time, with an implicit cost savings; (8) the city's data processing costs for payroll / payables were inconsistent with the norm; (9) the police department could examine the possibility of discontinuing regional files and going directly to the State system; and (10) there is a lack of liaison between the police department and the computer center in terms of priority of work to be done. Recommendations include an outline of an inhouse system to meet the requirements for the City of South Bend, which might be an IBM System / 3 Model 8 or Model 12. Cost savings could range from 30 percent to 50 percent. System criteria and evaluations of the system recommended, and tables with supportive data are provided.