| INFORMATION
SERVICES The MIS department, established in
1990, is currently staffed by a manager and ten professionals. In addition, consultants
are utilized on an occasional basis when a project requires additional resources or a
specialist.
MIS undertook several projects during 1998 and is involved
in several projects for 1999. The following is a listing of the major projects and a brief
summary of their status: |
 |
- Spectrum: The migration of our legacy COBOL software systems to an
Oracle client/server environment, has completed the third year of a four year plan. MWCIA,
along with American Cooperative Council on Compensation Technology (ACCCT) members
Wisconsin and North Carolina, are working with the consulting firm of Intelligent
Information Systems (IIS) on this project. Spectrum version 1.1 was deployed in February,
1998.
Significant strides toward completion of Spectrum 1.2 were made last year with a
completion date of third quarter 1999 expected.
- Bureau Entry and Edit Package (BEEP): MWCIA, as a member of ACCCT, has
been supporting this program for the past year. In addition, a planned upgrade is in the
design phase and is scheduled for distribution during the third quarter of 1999.
- World Wide Web (WWW) Inquiry: Project designed to allow carriers and
agents to view and print Experience Mod History, Assigned Risk Depop, Assigned Risk
Ratings, Carrier Names, Carrier Rates, Experience Rate Sheets and Circular Letter
information via the Internet. The first phase was completed recently with the next two
phases going live before the end of the second quarter of 1999. This project will replace
the existing BBS and Fax-on-Demand systems now in production.
- Keyfile: Project to upgrade our existing optical documentation
management system to a new version of this product was completed last year. Plans to
customize the new version to better suit MWCIA needs is in the process of being evaluated.
- RateMaking: Projects to rewrite a legacy RateMaking system was
completed last year. MWCIA's Actuarial department used this new system to create and
publish the 1998 RateMaking report. No new major changes are anticipated at this time.
- Carrier Calls: Project to distribute input and validation of Carrier
Calls to the carriers themselves. MIS & Actuarial have completed development of the
limited release version of CCR (Carrier Calls Remote). Eighteen carriers have agreed to
use this software as a part of the annual Carrier Calls process. Major mile- stones for
the next year include supporting and evaluating the system as well as preparation for full
distribution in the year 2000.
Other miscellaneous projects expected to be started or completed during 1999 include:
- Disaster Recovery(DRP): The evaluation and implementation of protecting
production data, software and hardware in the data center was completed last quarter.
Phase II, protection of all hardware and software throughout MWCIA, has been recently
started and is scheduled for completion by the end the first quarter in 1999. Phase III
will include the evaluation and inclusion of all MWCIA facilities. Goals and milestones
for this phase will be developed this quarter.
- Year 2000: Project to verify and or upgrade all MWCIA systems to be
year 2000 compliant was completed in August of 1998. Verification of our partners and
vendors is in progress and will be an on-going issue for the next year.
- Firewall: This is a joint project with WCRB, NCRB and IIS to replace
our existing file transfer and external access protection systems with a newer, more
secure system. This project was completed at all locations last November.
|
