Computer consolidation nearly complete

Exhaust systems whine. The floor, raised to allow the passage of cables underfoot, vibrates slightly.

Casually dressed workers monitor a batik of computer screens in a scene resembling the background set of a pre-game football show. The screens alert operators to any problems with the mainframe

Those computers run orders from numerous state agencies, from processing lottery bets to computing paychecks for 80,000 state workers.

Welcome to the Pennsylvania PowerHouse.

Once spread around Harrisburg, the state's mainframe computers, magnetic tape drives and tape libraries are here, crowded into a brightly lit, climate-controlled room in a building on the bucolic grounds of Harrisburg State Hospital.

Access to state-of-the-art technology, tight security measures and round-the-clock monitors are the main advantage of the data center. And they're something few agencies could have afforded on their own, state officials said.

Run under a 7-year, $515 million contract with Montgomery County-based Unisys Corp., the project is one of the largest information technology jobs a state has yielded to the private sector.

The contract's announcement in August 1999 followed the collapse of a more ambitious project in Connecticut, which would have gone to Electronic Data Systems Corp., Piano, Texas.

Given the black eye in Connecticut, success in Pennsylvania is crucial if states and large cities are to continue outsourcing information technology, and if Unisys is to win other contracts.

"It's in their best interest to make us happy," said Curt Haines, director of Pennsylvania's Bureau of Consolidated Computer Services.

Avoidance vs. savings

The biggest lesson Pennsylvania officials learned from Connecticut is to play down the promise of cost-savings, which unions interpreted as job cuts.

Initial estimates indicated nearly 400 jobs would disappear. But Scott Elliott, a spokesman for the Office of Administration, said only one person has been laid off.

"It wasn't because of a lack of trying on our part," he said, saying the worker rejected a transfer or retraining

The state found tech-related government jobs for almost all its displaced mainframe operators, said Haines. Others were hired by Unisys.

Officials have also limited the contract to data center maintenance and operation, which is the storage and use of information needed in the bureaucracy's daily work. Connecticut tried to outsource everything from network administration to software development.

Haines describes the estimated savings of $100 million over the 7-year contract as "cost-avoidance."

That means state agencies won't be spending $100 million they would have spent to recreate the new center's myriad security precautions, 24-hour upkeep and technology.

Still, some smaller agencies will pay a premium for their participation. The Public School Employees Retirement System, for example, is paying $7.8 million over the life of the contract, with the Office of Administration absorbing half the cost.

The pension fund, which covers Pennsylvania public school employees, is happy to pay the price; the contract allows its small tech staff to work on other projects, according to Terry Savidge, the fund's chief information officer.

One project would let school districts enroll new employees electronically.

Some districts still use paper applications, a reporting method more prone to error than an electronic one, said Robert Williams, Carlisle Area School District finance director. "Clearly there's more efficient and effective ways to do that with existing technology," he said.

Share and share alike

During a tour of the data center, Haines showed off mainframes as big as refri aerators.

An older mainframe, shaped like a double-H, takes up an area 20 feet by 20 feet. Used by the Public Welfare Department, it will soon be replaced by a new machine one-tenth the size.

Processing agency orders usually involves pulling the right tapes from among a library of 280,000 and inserting them in tape drives.

To eliminate human error, Unisys is installing automatic tape libraries, whose robotic arms can pluck bar-coded tapes and insert them in drives as needed, Haines said. Before the data center opened, only the Public Welfare Department and the Pennsylvania State Police had robotic libraries.

Costing almost $4 million, the library is 8-feet tall and holds about 5,400 tapes in a center column and on the inside wall. A robotic arm travels between the column and the wall. In a basement below are three diesel generators, a rack of 720 carbattery-sized batteries and another room full of older, larger batteries. Together, they ensure that if power were cut off, the computers will keep humming.

Security is also tight. A guard monitors entry to the building, which the data center shares with the Department of Public Works.

As a further precaution, Unisys has another building near Philadelphia where data center operations can reopen if the Harrisburg center burns down, or falls victim to a terrorist attack.

'Under the microscope'

Whether the data center's machinery will remain state-of-theart through the life of the contract is impossible to predict.

But aided in negotiations by Eckart Seamans Cherin & Mellott. a Pittsburgh law firm, state officials crafted an agreement that they believe prepares them for technological change.

The contract provides for purchasing new equipment as agency needs grow. But the language ensures the state won't lose out if today's technology costs less when it's needed in four years, Haines said.

In addition, the state had to satisfy the federal government, which foots the bill for some data center operations, such as the Department of Labor and Industry. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which use state records, were concerned about confidentiality.

After a six-month review, federal officials gave the state the OK to proceed.

The scrutiny hasn't ended. The center now hosts curious visitors from around the world, eager to see what outsourcing can do, Haines said.