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How can children learn faster what brings an I've been to an emergency sooner how do you get the right man in the right job the answer is computers only computers can cope with a diversity of municipal demands and to help you understand some of the uses of computers we bring to the series computers in modern city government your host for these programs is a deputy city administrator daughter services today's topic computer brains volunteer doctor Service thank you one of the most satisfying things that I've observed in my a period in government has been the interest of people throughout the city and even outside of the city to apply their skills and their talents in various ways and to volunteer to work with and to help city governments in the whatever way they can best do so. In particular I've been delighted with the response that we have had from professional people in the computer field who have expressed great interest in working with the city and helping city government in order to make better use of computers with us today we have two guests one is Paula Dean president of the systems discipline which is a computer consulting firm The other is Henry van der Meulen who is the manager of data equipment and systems planning of the International Telephone and Telegraph Company Henry was formerly the manager of computer systems planning with the mobile oil company when he first started helping the city in the ways that we're going to talk about today. The city volunteers are helping the city in a vote wide variety of ways in many different programs and Mayor Lindsay has established a volunteer Coordinating Council which is a means to permit people of a wide variety of skills to work with city departments on a wide variety of problems working as a in hospitals and working as a as businessman giving their advice freely to city government. The particular two things that we're going to be talking about today is how the volunteers have been working in the computer area for the city of New York Henry is chairman of the technical advisory panel on information systems Henry wanted to tell us what is the technical advisory panel on information systems Steve the the top is of the technical advisory panel and on information systems was organized to serve as a group of. People who had been gaining quite a bit of experience in the field of computer systems in various industrial companies you're being too modest Would you really mean is that you're a bunch of computer experts who are helping the city from the outside Well I think this is this is perhaps overdone but on the other hand our objective was to to make the experience that we had gained in various aspects of computer life in industry available to the city from the point of view of acting as an advisory board on technical questions that would come up periodically in the cities information systems activities how are you with stablished Who do you kind of help in the city government. Well we have a of course we're dealing primarily through your organization specifically. We have a number of people on the panel in other words let me get that straight in other words the technology wise the power was restored by deputy mayor city administrator Dr Costello and you're really difficult visor panel to him and since I'm in that office we are the guys who are working together this is correct it's sort of like a like a Technical Board of Directors Perhaps you could say as far as the. Computing activities are concerned in the city what kind of what what is the composition of the technical advisory panel you indicated that they were a group of senior and most knowledgeable computer experts around the city what that what kind of titles and what kind of organizations do they come from Henry Well we have several men one of them is from Union Carbide he is the manager of information systems planning from Union Carbide and we have people who are directors of computing centers in the city or in universities some of them have been directing some of the largest computing centers in the country. We have one individual Mr Herb Hammond from International Paper who is directing all the data processing effort for International Paper so I believe we have individuals who certainly have gained competence and in in this entire field. Years that it's been available one of the things that we tried to do in establishing the technical advisory panel was to have wanted computer experts who were users of computer rather than people who sell computers and computer services what are some of the other organizations the Mobile Oil Company was your your organizational home when you were on the technical advisory panel you mentioned International Paper and you know carbide What are some of the other organizations who senior computer management is represented on the technical advisory panel well as a matter of fact we have Arthur Hutt for example he's with the Bali savings bank he's a vice. He's or vice president. We have William Bieber of the Center for computing science and technology of the National Bureau of Standards which is a government organization as you know as policy Drosnin. He's director of systems and procedures for the National Dairy corporation the national dairy products corporation and. Dr Kenneth King is director of the computing scent of the Columbia University and that's one of the OP largest computer centers in the country as a matter of fact the last of the Columbia Yes I believe they have a sixty six hundred this one of the large a computer. What the. How well how has this technical advisory panel they've been working with us want to queue up describe how often how you've been working with us how how often we've been meeting Well initially I would say to the two we had a couple of start of meetings to listen get acquainted with what the problems of the city were and we discover that there are many similarities between was a large organization runs into in terms of its computing efficiency problems and the city. Subsequently some of us looked around our organizations to see what we might have that would have helped the city cities at Mr nation for example in the area of standards some of us had developed more adequate standards than might have been available generally speaking what do you buy standard I think it is because this is a good way to describe it's by standards you mean simply are. The various rules and procedures that have been developed in very large organizations like those represented on the technical advisory panel the rules and procedures for using computers and getting the most efficient use out of computers and using them properly and wisely in the organization. Is that a pretty good definition I think it is and I said there is an issue and I think another area that we got into was the the personnel procedures and the types of people that are required to run a computer operation from the point of view of programmers as well as operating people who. The running of the computers right one of the important features in the world around this is that the computer field in the computer profession has been growing very very rapidly since its inception about twenty years ago and whenever something is growing rapidly that means it's changing rapidly and new kinds of skills a new kinds of talents the are needed and we started investigating and looking into the city's data processing activities when the mail in the asked us to do so and discovered that in some respects our personnel structure had not been kept up to date and that new kinds of skills and you kinds of towns and you kinds of people were needed in this field which weren't adequately recognized by our civil structure and I know that I found the assistance of the technical advisory very very helpful in this way well as a matter of fact I think most large organizations to some extent have the same problem the the field is expanding and changing so rapidly that almost everybody has trouble now to define exactly what led to required in terms of personnel. And so the dialogue between our organizations and the city is beneficial not only to the city but is also beneficial to us because we gain some of the experience of the other members on the technical advisory panel as well as what the city has done in a rapidly expanding field of this sort no one can expect to be completely up to date without a continuous stream of conversations with other people in the same field through good I'm delighted to learn that the our volunteer program has not only benefited the city but that it also seems to be helping the organizations up which are participating in the technical advisory panel that that's an unexpected dividend that I'm pleased to see that. One way that I like to think of the technical advisory panel is that it serves in a sense as a window to the outside world in city government we're not in an island for threats of some sort we are we have to keep up with what's happening in changing fields we have to be aware and abreast of the latest developments and sometimes it's easy in a large organization whether it's a city or a company. To get kind of in-grown inbred and kind of look inside for ideas and not kind of keep the windows open to the outside world and so I found the technical advisory panel just a splendid opportunity to kind of open up their the windows to the outside world and to kind of ventilate the city a little bit with some of the latest things that are happening in the computer field giving us an opportunity to update our procedures to and then to make the kind of changes to keep us up breast of the latest technology what the Henry one of the one of the personal factors here what makes people are willing to to work on their own time or are on company time what makes companies willing to to have their their senior people in their top people spend time advising and helping the city in this kind of program well I think there are probably many different factors for the personal factors I'm sure it was very I think in this day and age with all the various problems urban problems there are many individuals who would like to contribute something in this in this entire area and there's no doubt that in the in the many larger organizations there is an awful lot of strong talent that may not always beef be completely utilized in terms of what their own personal satisfaction is maybe and we found for example that that at some of our organizations. That by by giving us some of the senior systems analyst senior systems consultants an opportunity to also express themselves in the area of urban problems in the area of city problems and using their technology that this had a cumulative effect not only on on on improving or helping to improve city efforts but also in terms of their own work effort and in the organizations from which they emanated. There was some concern for example expressed in our organization that perhaps of too much time were spent in on this activity that it would hurt their own internal work effort though we haven't found this to be true not. Granted we haven't sent people out to spend twenty or fifteen hours a week on this kind of a problem has been much lower level than this on the other hand even considering that sometimes a day a week or a half a day a week has been taken away from the general work activity that the Nevertheless we haven't really seen this in the lack of productivity at the office in other words what you've shown is that the highly motivated people can be motivated to do an even better job when they're working on things that are of interest to them and I'm pleased that the so many people and so many people in the computer field have recognized that there are such things as urban problems and that their skills and talents are relevant to those problems and can be used to tackle let me switch from from this technical advisory panel Henry to talk to Paul of Dean here for a while about another program the second one vies we panel represented a senior level a group of senior level advisories meeting with the city every month or two or so and giving us high level advice on how to make better use of our computers now there's another program that Paula Dean is the is the originator and has the can be credited for the brainstorm behind that which is to take advantage of systems analysts and computer experts to. Worked very directly with some of the city departments to help them almost on a day to day basis if you will with some of their problems Paul what is this volunteer program that you with a view of thought up some months ago how would you describe the volunteer program but basically it consists of people who are. Senior and technical specialists in the field of systems and computer analysis who are donating time on a weekly bi weekly or monthly basis. In studying and attempting to solve the problems of certain city agencies or the Parkman's there are about seven or eight of them is a correctional administration let me ask first let's use you you mentioned a mouthful there with systems analysts and computer systems experts. This term systems gets bandied about so much that the a lot of us both in and outside of the profession of having a hard time keeping up with how you define systems computer systems and all those what is a computer Silas what kind of things does he do with the good at basically a computer is is a is a large electronic machine that operates on pieces of information and it operates in a very simple way at great speed the systems analyst basically serves to look outside the machine it sets of problems and translate them into a set of characters that can be operated on by the machine in essence a systems analyst that is taking a problem that exists in everyday life whether in business or in city government and translating it into a form that the machine can act on what's an example of what a systems analyst might work on it in real terms that might affect us on a day to day basis how about the. The bills that we get from the utilities or the paychecks that we get that are competitive prepared by computer what is a systems analyst have to do with that for instance a systems analyst would at first determine the the community to be served in a sense by the utility. Receiving services. From that utility would be involved in recording that community in some form as customers or clients of one sort or another in translating a method by which the computer could charge based on the hours days or weeks of service provided by assigning values to those charges by computing bills by maintaining an inventory of. Those bills which paid those bills which one paid by creating reports out of them by producing an ability to analyze what the expectation for the similar activity could be in the future let me this then other where the computer systems analyst who is charged with the responsibility for developing a computerized method for sending out utility bills would kind of analyze the problem figure out what numbers have to come off of which form let's say when a meter reader goes out and we did electric meter he's got to worry about how those numbers get written down onto a piece of paper how those papers get punched up into the punch cards how those punch cards get over to a computer and what kind of programs have to be written so the computer takes those numbers doesn't necessary addition subtraction multiplication what have you to come out with with a bill that somehow the other lines up in an envelope in my mailbox on the first of the month is that he also has to provide a procedure so the customer can execute a grievance when the computer's wrong but that's basically what he does OK OK fine now what the what kinds of people and what kinds of projects have they been working on in our volunteer program in the city I think the people are often the most part very experienced analysts who have designed them in involved in systems requiring computers in some cases not their work work for companies similar to the people on the technical advisory panel except these offer the most part volunteers who have Project responsibilities that work for companies like mobile and I T.N.T. American Airlines Texaco author Anderson Columbia University the Bankers Trust Company consulting firms like Simon Maddox author Anderson of course is also a consulting firm. In the correctional administration and which is the city's agency that has responsibility for the jails the basic attempt here. Since as an interesting note the management of a jail is not the similar to the management of a hotel in that you have the same was just a call in the mentor of problems in terms of people in rooms and you also the thing point to V.O.A. jail is a little bit like a hotel that sounds like some of the hotels that I've been in but I think this is also primarily the opinion of a man on the outside not on the inside but but in S.G. another way that's right when you think about it you've got to be concerned about people coming in you've got to make sure that there's space for them you've got a kind of a range for their registration you had a kind of keep track of when the the room or the cell is going to be empty in running a hotel you've got to make sure you've got in a food to feed everybody to your expecting the problems really are quite similar. In this it in this sense the analysts working with the corrections administration are trying to make use of techniques that have been effective in Hotel Administration at the same time study the problems of the corruption administration and making recommendations to it. That work has been going on with the courts in terms of speeding up the processes of the criminal courts Supreme Courts in the civil courts of this work that's been done with the economic development the search on the courts let me just back off a moment and point out the the court area and the whole area of criminal justice is one that Mayor Lindsay has been devoting a great deal of his personal effort to and has a very very high in his priority list. As Mayor Lindsay puts it justice and justice delayed is justice denied and sometimes these long delays in cases be they criminal cases or civil cases results in in effect and in poor justice and the thrust of that court's project which involves up to two up which interestingly enough involves two volunteers a mobile oil company who got interested in volunteers for the city thanks to Henry's efforts when he's on the two. I think a lot when he was on technical advisory panel. That courts project is consuming a fair amount of their time and is proceeding very very effectively the volunteers there are part of an interdepartmental task force that's working on the courts what other up agencies are the volunteers working on in the system so ALS there's this work being done with the Department of highways some of the effort here is on scheduling maintenance work on the thousands of miles of roads that the city must maintain on major construction work and on managing the vehicles at the Department of highways most Ron let me let me describe this very very vividly what scheduling maintenance means the city has about six thousand and sixty five hundred miles of street and like anything else that gets used to get get damaged and there are potholes springtime is the case with our potholes and one of the problems it's always maddening is when one city department like that upon the highways close off the street and starts are making a street repair and then and then pays it over and then about a week later one of the utilities companies comes along and chops a hole in that same street in order to do something that they've got to do which has nothing to do with city government but has to do with reaching some telephone cables underneath all some some aghast lines or power lines or what have you. Improved scheduling of maintenance would the hopefully in time lead to a decrease in the amount of time that that happens and getting kind of better coordination that if the streets got to be opened up and chopped up maybe a arrange it so that all of the various jobs that have to be done to it get done at once instead of inconveniencing the public inconveniencing the public several times running. What other up kinds of activities on the island here has been I'm sorry there's work being done with the Department of Consumer Affairs which is responsible for issuing a Mentone records of many licenses for the inspection of markets ordering bingo games and there was an attempt being made there to the foreign. This is by which these things can be done more efficiently. A good deal of work has been done at the office of labor relations as the city employs some three hundred thousand people I believe. The office of labor relations must negotiate with the unions that represent them in the temp here is being made to provide information which will allow the city. To maintain better records Johnson ago showed more effectively with its own employees. Well one of the important things that is kind of the background for this volunteer program which incidentally we started back last summer was that kind of went into operation. Is the fact that the very large agencies in city government are are pretty well served they tend to have the appropriate kind of people either working for them or available one way or the other to them to work on but the really very very large problems that are involved let's say in. Dispatching police cars more effectively or involved in the various things that have to do with having the city pay its bills in the controllers office in the budget office and turning out the checks for the payroll and so on but there are number of relatively smaller departments in the city departments which show were easy to overlook in this area and which weren't well in doubt let's say with the kind of skills that that are required in order to get involved in computerization using computers to improve their internal administration. Wanted to pull How exactly does a systems analyst work what do you do when he when he goes to an agency whether it's the Department of highways of the correction administration of the office of labor relations or the corporation counsel's office and what are the kind of do well while he's there how does a systems analyst work what is it look like and what is he will do in this in the simplest terms he must. Almost simultaneously define what processes exist at a given point in time and must also define what problems exist as part of those processes and the problems can range from anything like the inability of an agency or group to pay its bills to management not being able to make decisions on time because of not having adequate data and once he's able to define the real world as it exists in an agency and able to define also what the problems in that agency are you can then look at those problems in terms of solving them by the use of variety of techniques and computers not always employed the computer is a good one where you have large repetitive processes in the processing large amounts of information basically the men who are working in this area will have a great deal of experience that way and some of the recommendations of came out that have come out have been made and will be implemented independent of the use of computers in a sense he's a man who uses a computer as one of a number of tools one of the best ways to gauge the effectiveness of of our volunteer program is simply to look at the at the results and one of the results of particular is that more agencies are asking to establish a volunteer program of this sort and very interesting Lee When I was talking with the director of the municipal Broadcasting System and he expressed an interest in having this radio series one of the things that he said was a hey I didn't know you had these kind of volunteers available to work maybe you can get some of the volunteers to spend some time right here in the municipal broadcasting system to see ways in which we might take advantage of computers and he said to me we've I've been trying to do something in this area for some time and and we just don't have the right kind of people on board here I'm sure if you give them the opportunity to break into show business where you'll have no problem getting it right. Well what we've been hearing today is something about how volunteers are from various walks of life in general but more specifically from the computer field are working with the city of New York. In making their expertise available to the city to help the city work on some of its profound problems I'd like to thank Paula Dean of the system discipline and Henry van Benylin of the International Telephone and Telegraph Company for being our guests today. Thank you don't a service you've been listening to another broadcast of computers and modern city government next week's topic is databank breakthrough if you have any questions about today's program or wish to receive a booklet titled introducing the computer right to computers W N Y Z New York one hundred seven and join us again next week at the same time for another look at computers and modern city government.