DON'T BLAME THE COMPUTER

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 21, 1993                   TAG: 9303220388
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: B-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short
DON'T BLAME THE COMPUTER
REGARDING the March 2 story, page A1, "Computer error, human oversight let motel burn":
There was no computer error but human error (and not of the 911 human operator) in the situation that allowed the Holiday Inn-Salem to burn an extra 20 minutes when the system failed. Blaming it on "the computer" obscures the real sources of the error - the system design and administration that either allowed invalid data to be uncritically accepted or accepted an incorrect program.
Life-critical systems must have more than correct programs and working computers. Their databases must be clean, accurate and current. Constant validation and recertification is a necessity.
In the case of the 911 system, there should be regular validation checks run against land parcel and title-record systems maintained by the local government bodies, to ensure that all currently addressable land parcels are incorporated. It should also be validated against telephone company line pairs to determine if all telephone lines are accounted for and associated with their correct addresses in the telephone company files.
Shorting the test, validation and update phases of a life-critical system implementation is penny wise and pound foolish. At least no lives were lost this time. ELLIOT S. WHEELER ROANOKE

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB