In this continuing story, a Florida county Property Appraiser told commissioners that a Y2K remediation estimate of nearly $14 million by a computer firm called SCT could be done by his people for $700,000. Gartner was called in and asked to assess the SCT estimate. They recommended that the commissioners go with the SCT proposal. Lee county chose instead to try the appraiser. This was in November.

Four months later the appraiser announced his people were finished with all of the work, ahead of schedule and on-budget. As a result, the county now refuses to pay Gartner for "terrible advice."

The question: did the appraiser actually fix the systems for a fraction of the time and money estimated by SCT? He says he'd prefer if the county saved themselves some money and not hire someone to check his work.

Anyone wanna bet this guy just really doesn't want his "work" checked? I'm hooked on this story - can't wait for the finish.

-- Brett (savvydad@aol.com), March 18, 1999

Answers

Sorry - forgot to give the link:

http://www. naplesnews.com/today/bonita/d234659a.htm

-- Brett (savvydad@aol.com), March 18, 1999.

The gentleman that "fixed" their has said that he doesn't want his WORK CHECKED! IV & V, independent validation & verification. An article from the recent Y2K News Magazine pointed out that this step is crucial to remediated systems. They cited a manufactuirng firm that thought they were "compliant", but the IV&V found crtical errors that would have severely hampered the company.

Also, Gartner's $14 miilion estimate, did that include embedded chip remediation? Hence the substantial fee...

PJC

-- PJC (paulchri@msn.com), March 18, 1999.