SUNY blames Y2K for release of student loan files

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Grassroots Information Coordination Center (GICC) : One Thread

Gleaned from an EZ Board thread.

The State University of New York blunder
that prompted incorrect and potentially
damaging financial data about former
students to be reported to major credit
bureaus stemed from a Y2K computer
conversion, state officials said Tuesday.

. . .

The mistake happened after the state
agency gave Educational Computer
Systems Inc. (ECSI) of Coraopolis,
Pa., a software contract last year for
approximately $100,000. ECSI, near
Pittsburgh, specializes in data management
software for student loans.

. . .

If the center continued using the old
software, its computers would have used
two-digit data fields reading the year
"00" as 1900. The old software was
developed on an IBM platform at SUNY
around 1971 and updated in 1980.

Buffalo News

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), October 04, 2000

Answers

Same story but with all reference to
'Y2K' removed.

Buffalo News

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), October 04, 2000.


Mention of y2k is now officially a media heresy

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), October 04, 2000.

In all fairness, it should be noted that the "second" link (article with no reference to Y2K) is dated a week *before* the October 4 full- text article with the prominent "Y2K" headline and content. I initially had the impression the "second" link represented an after- the-fact editorial clean up of the same article, but that's clearly not the case when you consider the publication dates.

While I agree completely with the statement that mentioning Y2K borders on heresy in the press, in this case the second article mentions Y2K apparently because the University admitted the link, while at the time of the first article it appears no such admission was made by the University.

The real problem, related to the comment about heresy, is that reporters are so complacent--in the initial September story the computer problem was admitted to be date-related, but the reporter apparently did not ask about Y2K. The media hounds are not journalists, they are merely conveyor belts for press releases.

-- Andre Weltman (aweltman@state.pa.us), October 05, 2000.


Thanks Andre, you absolutely right.
I should have been more careful.
The thing that got me about them is
how two stories about the same subject
can be so different based on the way
that they are reported.

I'm sorry for the misleading comment.

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), October 05, 2000.


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