Computer Failures

Many will welcome the new millennium with champagne, kisses and colorful renditions of "Auld Lang Syne," but not Steve Clark. Instead, the 45-year-old data center guru from Washington Mutual Inc. will spend his New Year's Eve in a nondescript two-story Chatsworth office building with about a dozen technicians and lots of data-crunching hardware.

Scrambling to avoid a repeat of a systems meltdown last month that snarled travel for tens of thousands of international passengers at LAX, U.S. customs officials have fast-tracked an overhaul of their operations here and around the nation. Los Angeles International Airport officials say they are encouraged by the response of customs officials, who were put in a hot seat after their widely publicized system failure Aug. 11. About $15.

Re "State Kills Project to Link Welfare Networks," July 12: Hundreds of millions for dysfunctional computer systems that were scrapped over the past decade and the taxpayers have nothing to show for this expense. In the real world where performance is measured, budgets must be met and costs are monitored, such incompetent performance would have been terminated early and those responsible held accountable. Politicians and bureaucrats seem to drift from one expensive disaster to the next.

A cascading computer failure in the nation's air traffic control system caused severe flight delays and some cancellations Friday along the Eastern Seaboard. A computer system in Atlanta that processes pilots' flight plans and sends them to air traffic controllers failed late Thursday or early Friday, said Diane Spitaliere, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration.

For many years I've read about the costly computer system failures in both business and government ("High-Tech Titanics," editorial, Sept. 11), and it occurs to me that one problem you didn't mention is scale. My children attend a small, independent school where the "information systems department" consists of Mrs. Garvey and a couple of personal computers using off-the-shelf software. I doubt she has ever experienced a $411-million cost overrun. A tiny fraction of those massive systems budgets could fund scores of efficient Mrs. Garveys for years.

The Sheriff's Department's computer-aided dispatching system is greatly overburdened, regularly suffers unexplained failures for up to 20 minutes at a time and has lost information about emergency calls, according to an internal report completed this summer. The report on the Emergency Communications Bureau also noted that dispatchers and others who take information from callers have vented their frustrations over equipment malfunctions on callers.

Astronauts aboard the shuttle Atlantis ran into a series of computer problems that prevented the completion of a practice countdown today in the first launch pad test since the Challenger disaster. The rocky exercise opened three days of major tests at launch pad 39-B--the same pad used by Challenger Jan. 28.

A cascading computer failure in the nation's air traffic control system caused severe flight delays and some cancellations Friday along the Eastern Seaboard. A computer system in Atlanta that processes pilots' flight plans and sends them to air traffic controllers failed late Thursday or early Friday, said Diane Spitaliere, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Scores of outgoing flights were delayed at Northern California and Nevada airports Monday because of a computer failure. The Federal Aviation Administration said the failure, which lasted almost six hours, happened during regular maintenance. "When the software was reinstalled, it wouldn't come back up on time," said FAA spokesman Jerry Snyder. "It came back up on the third attempt at 7:50 a.m." The software assigns codes to departing flights, enabling air traffic controllers to track them.

About 445 of Wells Fargo Bank's 1,200 automated teller machines in California shut down temporarily on Wednesday because of a computer failure, the bank said. The rare shutdown, which started Wednesday morning and lasted until late afternoon, affected ATMs mostly in the state's Central Valley, but some in Southern California were also hit, Wells Fargo spokeswoman Kim Kellogg said.

Most of the contents of NASA's Genesis space probe appear to be intact and usable despite the craft's crash landing in the Utah desert, researchers said Friday. "We should be able to meet many, if not all, of our science goals," said Roger C. Wiens of Los Alamos National Laboratory, a principal investigator. The $264-million mission was designed to gather components of solar wind and return them to Earth for analysis.

A breakdown of a new laboratory computer system at the county's main public hospital last week substantially delayed urgent blood-test results for critically ill patients, causing the emergency room to declare an "internal disaster" and turn away ambulances.

Scores of outgoing flights were delayed at Northern California and Nevada airports Monday because of a computer failure. The Federal Aviation Administration said the failure, which lasted almost six hours, happened during regular maintenance. "When the software was reinstalled, it wouldn't come back up on time," said FAA spokesman Jerry Snyder. "It came back up on the third attempt at 7:50 a.m." The software assigns codes to departing flights, enabling air traffic controllers to track them.

Many will welcome the new millennium with champagne, kisses and colorful renditions of "Auld Lang Syne," but not Steve Clark. Instead, the 45-year-old data center guru from Washington Mutual Inc. will spend his New Year's Eve in a nondescript two-story Chatsworth office building with about a dozen technicians and lots of data-crunching hardware.

For many years I've read about the costly computer system failures in both business and government ("High-Tech Titanics," editorial, Sept. 11), and it occurs to me that one problem you didn't mention is scale. My children attend a small, independent school where the "information systems department" consists of Mrs. Garvey and a couple of personal computers using off-the-shelf software. I doubt she has ever experienced a $411-million cost overrun. A tiny fraction of those massive systems budgets could fund scores of efficient Mrs. Garveys for years.

Whatever people have planned for the last New Year's Eve of the millennium, apparently sitting aboard a jetliner isn't high on the list. American Airlines said Tuesday it will scrap 20% of its flights on Dec. 31 and 5% on Jan. 1 because of slow ticket sales, which some blame in part on travelers' fears that the date change will cause computers to fail and lead to travel chaos.

Returning smartly dressed from a New York business trip, Tiziana Bocus landed here Sunday on one of the first flights into her city's smartly designed Malpensa 2000 air terminal--a $1.1-billion effort to stake a place for Italy among the continental economic elite. By the time she cleared customs and stepped onto the polished marble floor of the arrivals hall--two hours later and missing her luggage--Bocus' civic pride had turned to livid shame. "This is just disgusting!" she said.

Re "State Kills Project to Link Welfare Networks," July 12: Hundreds of millions for dysfunctional computer systems that were scrapped over the past decade and the taxpayers have nothing to show for this expense. In the real world where performance is measured, budgets must be met and costs are monitored, such incompetent performance would have been terminated early and those responsible held accountable. Politicians and bureaucrats seem to drift from one expensive disaster to the next.

Returning smartly dressed from a New York business trip, Tiziana Bocus landed here Sunday on one of the first flights into her city's smartly designed Malpensa 2000 air terminal--a $1.1-billion effort to stake a place for Italy among the continental economic elite. By the time she cleared customs and stepped onto the polished marble floor of the arrivals hall--two hours later and missing her luggage--Bocus' civic pride had turned to livid shame. "This is just disgusting!" she said.