Letters To The Editor

Corporate Welfare?

I'm overjoyed to see how my federal tax funds are going toward something that will help keep thousands of unemployed IT workers out of work ("McDonald's Adds To IT Menu," June 23, 2003). It's especially gratifying that a small company like McDonald's can get a helping hand from the government since it could never afford to hire the appropriate talent to complete its projects.

Stuart Whitmore Puyallup,
Wash.

We seem to be in a sustained free fall of resources--too many people, not enough jobs, and, consequently, lower salaries ("Half-Empty, Half-Full, All-Around Depressing," June 16, 2003). I take some issue with Vic Janulaitis' assessments. My experience is just the opposite: Employers are asking for the moon and not paying much for it.

Larry LaRock
President, Eagle Performance Systems,
Anaheim Hills, Calif.

I designed and implemented the back-end portion of the Department of Buildings project spotlighted in "Taming The Beast" (June 9, 2003). I think your article overlooked a few salient points.

• About 70% of existing legacy code was reused for the Web.
• When we did modify code, it was usually because of new data requirements the old screens didn't address.
• By keeping the data in Adabas and the majority of the business process in Natural, we were able to capitalize on the superior speed of a mainframe database while keeping a Web interface.
• The design of a system makes code flexible, not the platform it's written on.

David Presley
Assistant Director of Information Technology,
New York City Department of Buildings

In "Gap Analysis" (Government Enterprise, Summer, p. 6), the last name of Treasury Department CIO Drew Ladner was misspelled.