February 2004
Vol. 10 No. 2
Giving Legacy Systems a Life Sentence, Not the Death Penalty
BY DREW ROBB
ccording to television psychologists, you just have to make
the decision to change and then change is easy. They never
had to deal with legacy IT systems. On Nov. 14, 2003, for
example, the General Accounting Office released its latest report on
enterprise integration at the FBI which found that it still didn’t even
have a workable plan for bringing together its myriad information
silos.
While it is tempting to just do a rip and replace to bring outdated
legacy systems up to 21st Century technology, that isn’t always necessary or desirable. A new, Web-based system is much more attractive and easy to use than an old green-screen terminal one, but in
many cases these older systems do work and it just isn’t worth the
money to replace them. That was the situation with the State of Tennessee’s Department of Corrections.
“We wanted to simplify our system and change to a Windowstype Graphical User Interface,” said Robert Chick, Information Manager for the Tennessee Department of Corrections (DoC) in
Nashville, Tenn.
Everybody is moving away from COBOL and green screens. But
the price tag to replace the decade old, custom-built enterprise system
came to $14 million dollars. By retaining the existing system and just
putting in place a new front end, however, the DoC found it could get
what it needed at a fifth the cost.
The DoC uses a system designed by the now-defunct accounting
and consulting firm, Arthur Anderson, called TOMIS — Tennessee
Offender Management Information System. It uses TOMIS to keep
track of its 20,000 state inmates, 50,000 people on probation or parole
and another 5,000 in county jails. In addition, it contains information
on another quarter million individuals who are not currently under
the DoC’s purview.
About 7000 users access TOMIS as part of their job, generating
about 800,000 transactions per day. Through it, users can track the
location and security level of a prisoner; look up any incidents
resulting in disciplinary action; track their property and visitors; view
their jobs and educational activities. They can also find out how long
a person has left on a sentence, the anticipated parole date, and any
factors that would extend or reduce the sentence.
“TOMIS makes us better managers since it assists in the collection and analysis of data,” says Chick. “It allows us to predict our
needs and decide what resources we are going to commit.”
At the core of the system lies an IBM DB2 database. Sitting on
top of the database are around a thousand programs with over a mil-
A
lion lines of code. Users accessed TOMIS’ more than 200 tables and
450 screens though a mixture of thin clients and PCs.
“Each screen contained its own unique set of data,” said Chick.
“There were no calendars, no drop down menus, no tabs — just like
we had 20 years ago.”
Although the mainframe hosting TOMIS is managed by the
state’s Office of Information Service, the DoC staff can do their own
system design with OIR programers updating and enhancing the
code. Security is set at the screen-level. Some users have access to
only 20 of the screens, while others have access to all of them.
Since the system lacked a GUI, users had to memorize the commands necessary to locate and move between the screens. Since
many of the terminals didn’t permit scrolling, this necessitated
switching back and forth between screens to complete a task. Plainly,
this is not a very efficient way of working.
“For some business functions you had to go through five different
screens rather than being able to do it all from a single page,” said
Tom Joplin, TOMIS site coordinator at the Lois M. DeBerry Special
Needs Facility in Nashville.
As it would have been cost-prohibitive to replace the entire
system, the DoC requested that legacy application integration firm
Jacada Ltd. (Atlanta, Ga.) provide a demonstration of an updated version to be called eTOMIS. Jacada has performed such upgrades for
over 1200 commercial and public sector enterprises since 1990.
After a successful demonstration of the technology, the state contracted with the firm to perform a full upgrade. The job entailed a mix
of efforts between the state and Jacada. The DoC paid Jacada about
$1.2 million for its integration services and state workers put in about
6000 hours on the project, with as many as seven people working on
the project at a time.
Chick laid out three main goals for the project.
To give the system a Windows look and feel, including
replacing repetitive key strokes with drop down lists, combo boxes,
pop-up windows, calendars, tabs, buttons, task bars and tool bars.
To reduce the number of screens a user would have to access to
perform a task by compressing multiple screens into a single screen.
To redesign and rearrange the data so that it was more in line with
the business functions.
From design to implementation the work on the new system took
about a year and a half. The integration with the back end was done
through the use of XHTML (eXtensible HTML, a version of HTML
that allows users to add proprietary tags). Although the XHTML
Reprinted with permission
Publications & Communications Inc. • 11675 Jollyville Rd. Ste 150 • Austin, TX 78759 • 512-250-9023
February 2004
expanded the range of features available to DoC personnel. The new
system integrates with outside applications allowing the bundling of
programs containing offender photographs and drivers license information into the system. Previously, these had to be accessed through
separate applications. The department was also able to incorporate
its manuals and policies. The screens contain hotlinks providing
direct access to other screens the user may need. For example, if a
user is looking at an offender’s location and wants to also find out
his security classification, he can now just click on the hot link rather
than having to type in a series of commands as the older system
required.
Users access these additional applications through the toolbar. They
can also create their own favorites lists to quickly access the screens
and choices they use most often, rather than having to go through the
entire menu of options. The system also includes word wrap, spell
check and other tools not available in the old character-based system.
Anticipating an October 2003 eTOMIS roll out, users access to
the new system was established through the state’s intranet using a
Vol. 10 No. 2
Web browser. Next came the task of training the thousands of
employees who had used the green-screen system for the past decade
to do their jobs.
“It takes a while to roll out 480 screens to 7000 users,” says Chick.
“Web-savvy users are happy with the new system, but it is a problem
for others who are used to punching memorized F-keys rather than
clicking on buttons.
“The feedback, however, has generally been positive. Users do
have questions on how to navigate through the system, but it is easier
to do once they get the hang of it.”
Joplin, who has used TOMIS since is came on line in 1992, says
the new system is simpler and easier to use than the old one. The consolidation of screens means that some business functions that used
to require accessing five different screens can now be done on a single
one.
“We used to say that TOMIS is your friend, but sometimes it was
and sometimes it wasn’t,” says Joplin. “eTOMIS really is your friend
once you learn how to use it.” ENS
Reprinted with permission
Publications & Communications Inc. • 11675 Jollyville Rd. Ste 150 • Austin, TX 78759 • 512-250-9023