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5 Minutes CASE #5: <br /> <br />CONSIDER A ~WARE A~D SOFTWARE <br />UPGRADE FOR TME CITY'S COMPUTER SYSTEM <br />By: Noel Graczyk, Finance Officer <br /> <br />Background: <br /> <br />In 1984 the City made an initial purchase of data processing equipment. At <br />that time the City purchased a Texas Instrument 990 mini computer, a 96 mega <br />bite hard disk drive, seven Texas Instrument 931 terminals, and three printers. <br />This system was originally used to implement word processing in the City in <br />1984. This system was also used in 1984 and 1985 to implement the MASYS ENFORS <br />system in order to provide data processing ability for the Police Department <br />and communication with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. In 1985 <br />the City began to use the system for its financial system. The City <br />implemented a general ledger fund accounting system, a revenue and expense <br />budgetary accounting system, a cash receipt system, an accounts payable system, <br />and a payroll system. <br /> <br />The City continues to operate all of these systems on the current hardware. <br />The City will be facing two problems from utilizing this hardware for all these <br />various applications. First of all, required disk storage space will be needed <br />by each system as additional information is accumulated over time. In <br />particular, the MASYS ENFORS system and word processing continue to grow <br />because of the accumulation of police records and word processing documents <br />used on a repetitive basis. The second problem the City will be facing is that <br />the increased daily use of the hardware places a processing burden on the <br />current processor, a /10, that results in a slowdown in the efficiency of the <br />hardware to meet the demands placed on it. <br /> <br />The City will also be facing additional demands for meeting the utility billing <br />needs both now and in the future and for providing automated record keeping of <br />the City's levied special assessments. Both of these examples will require <br />that the City have additional storage capacity and a stronger processor to deal <br />with the demands of processing these areas. <br /> <br />Ob servations :' <br /> <br />It has been presented to the Council that there is the possibility of using <br />unappropriated Federal Revenue Sharing funds to meet some of the data <br />processing needs of the City. <br /> <br />It is recommended that the City consider the data processing needs in two <br />phases. The first phase: If the City wishes to purchase a utility billing <br />system to run on the Texas Instrument computer, the following items would be <br />needed: <br /> <br />Utility billing software <br /> <br />$ 8,495.00 <br /> <br />Communication hardware <br /> <br />1,565.00 <br /> <br />Disk drive (used) <br /> <br />]1,~00.00. <br /> <br />TOTAL <br /> <br />$21,560.00 <br /> <br /> <br />