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Presents the results of the '16th Annual Salary Survey' of 'Computerworld,' regarding the salary of information technology (IT) professions in the U.S., released as of October 2002. Percentage of IT professionals who had an average six percent increase in their salaries; Percentage whose salaries received pay cuts; Percentage of communications managers who saw their bonuses grow; Average pay increase of network administrators.

Enumerates the winners of Computerworld Smithsonian Awards for information technology which includes LC Technologies Incorporated, Purdue University, Frito-Lay Incorporated and Stanford Medical School.

Presents an interview with Tom DeMarco, pioneer of structured analysis in computer programming, concerning information management. Environment that fosters productivity among software developers; Characteristics of an ideal information systems manager; Effect of deadline pressures on programmers.

States that law firms in the United States will benefit from litigation over the failure of computer systems in the year 2000 if systems are not fixed before that date. Liability of companies in class actions suits brought by shareholders; Names of firms that are helping technology users from being sued; Debate over the disclosure of information by companies to the public. INSETS: Pop quiz;Frontier justice.

Reports on the problems experienced by information systems (IS) managers due to a shortage of skilled professionals. Difficulty of finding qualified IS staff with basic programming and systems skills as well as business knowledge; Distractions caused by the lack of skilled IS professionals on managers.

Features anecdotes of client/server training from various companies. Sprint; Grolier Inc.; KFC Corp.; Cost analyses; Information systems staff views; Managers' comments. INSET: What works..

Focuses on outsourcing in the information services industry. Case studies; Problems encountered by various companies; General Dynamics Corp.'s contract with Computer Sciences Corp.; British Petroleum Exploration's information systems internal consultant. INSETS: The importance of being earnest.;Rules for dealing with employees.;Out with the old skills, in with the new..

This article reports on the debate between author Nicholas G. Carr and inventor Bob Metcalfe over the relevance of information technology (IT) to U.S. companies. Carr asserted that IT has lost its ability to provide companies with a competitive advantage. Carr began by recounting his article IT Doesn't Matter. He argued that IT applications and infrastructure have become so easily replicable that they no longer provide sustainable competitive advantage. Like railroads, telephones and electricity, IT has become part of the general business infrastructure. Companies do not realize this and as a result, they spend much more aggressively on IT than they should. Risk management in IT is more important than innovation and the biggest risk is overspending. On the other hand, Metcalfe argued that IT matter to the tune of $1.8 trillion in IT spending in 2003. Metcalfe said Carr chose to cite only studies that support his thesis. The unsung heroes in the innovation machine are the IT leaders in the Premier 100 audience. He added that Carr is not wrong, but he is also dangerous because he has succeeded in misleading the vast majority of Harvard Business Review readers. Jack in the Box Inc. director Roger Zakharia said he disagrees with Carr's conclusions but can understand his cautionary message about not jumping into new technologies too quickly.

Presents information on RouteOne LLC, a joint venture of several major automakers in the U.S. Mission of the company; Background on the computer networks of the company; Management strategies of chief information officer Joel Gruber for RouteOne; Difficulties faced by the company.

Explains that chief information officers (CIOs) in the U.S. should know how to deal the legal risks of security breaches, privacy invasions, data destruction and software piracy. Laws that entail legal risks to businesses; Information on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act; States who adopted laws that pose legal risks to businesses; Suggestions to CIOs.

Discusses the need for U.S. manufacturers and retailers to update their computer systems to handle longer bar codes by January 1, 2005. Provisions of the Sunrise 2005 mandate of the Uniform Code Council Inc.; Significance of Sunrise 2005 to globalization efforts; Challenges faced by retailers in complying with the mandate.

Discusses Web-based training of employees in the United States. Comments from Courtenay Buchan of Wachovia Corp. about the course called Partnering for Results from Ninth House Inc.; Training at Northrop Grumman Information Technology; Expected value of electronic learning by 2005.

Reports on the growing number of U.S. companies exploring the use of complex adaptive system modeling, a simulation method on their businesses. Potential applications of the simulation method on various industries; Genesis of the method; Objectives of the complex adaptive system theory project undertaken by Procter & Gamble Co. in partnership with BiosGroup Inc. and other organizations; Risk posed by complexity modeling.

Focuses on the establishment of an electronic business by Duke Energy based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Goal of the company for creating the electronic business; Information on the strategic planning team behind the company; Information on the collection of the operating budget for the business.

Focuses on companies in the United States which practice and nurture diversity in the workplace. Accommodations made by Teco Energy Inc. for David Gondreau, a system analyst who is quadriplegic; Views of Dennis Klinger, vice president for information management at Florida Power, on workplace diversity; Scope of Florida Power Corp.'s diversity awareness program; Philosophy in handling personnel issues at Royal Caribbean.

Focuses on the strategic use of information technology by Valley City State University in North Dakota. Details on the training offered by the university to its teachers; Financial challenges encountered by the company; How students benefit from the use of technology.

Reports on the employment diversity at information technology companies in Silicon Valley in California, as well as the claims of critics that these companies are more interested in importing foreign workers rather than targeting underrepresented local minorities. Goal of Joint Venture; Claims of a class-action civil rights complaint by the Coalition for Fair Employment; Requirement for real diversity in the workplace.

Reports on postgraduate programs in e-commerce offered by college campuses in the United States. Key to the success of a program at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Master of Science in E-Commerce program at the School of Business Administration of the University of San Diego; E-commerce concentration offered by North Carolina State University's master's program in management.

Focuses on an application of distributed computing of volunteer personal computers organized into a virtual parallel computer in the United States. Purpose of the application; Benefits of using the Internet in the application.

Unveils the employee benefits offered at businesses in the United States that hire diverse information technology (IT) workers. Top lesson from companies that excel at workplace diversity; Initiative at American Management Systems Inc. to attract and retain diverse talent; Objectives in providing peer coaching or mentoring to all new hires.

Focuses on the challenges faced by women information technology (IT) employees in Silicon Valley, California. Culture bias experienced by Beverly Ulbrich, senior vice president at Brightware Inc. and Paula Camporaso, vice president of IT at Legato Systems Inc.; Advice to IT managers and female workers.

Features Ketty Brown, an information technology (IT) project manager at Clinton, Indiana-based Eli Lilly and Co. Career background; Background on Brown's strategies for motivating her IT staff.

Presents information on Coca-Cola's use of its marketing technology in increasing sales of retailers. How the marketing works; Comments from Don Hodson, senior manager for category management information of Coca-Cola; Details on store strategies. INSETS: Dicing the Data;The Big Picture.

Features the HarlemLive, a mosaic of life in that African-American community in New York, produced by Harlem high school students and delivered as a Web magazine. Creation by former teacher Richard Calton; Hosting of the site by the Columbia University; Winner of the 1999 Computerworld Smithsonian Awards, honoring information technology (IT) projects in the United States that benefit society.

Focuses on the capabilities of military veterans in the United States to become effective information technology workers. Familiarity with computers; Possession of management experiences; Ability to interact with people. INSET: Hire a veteran?.

Points out the simplicity of the emerging Web-based project management tools in the United States. Insights from project managers; Examples of such tools; How the tools operate; What project managers need to know about the tools. INSETS: Market players;Web project management pros and cons.

Reports on the shortage of year 2000 project managers in the United States. Responsibilities of project managers; Availability of enough computer programmers in the country; Details on the demand for project managers; Comments from Jim Jones, managing director of the year 2000 group at the Information Management Forum in Atlanta, Georgia. INSET: Triple threat.

Profiles several project management directors in the United States. Includes Steve Mcmenamin of Southern California Edison Co.; Gene Dressler of GTE Telecommunications Services Inc.; Sarah Gavit of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Focuses on ways for non-technical information systems (IS) managers to lead a technical staff. Case of Wyette Spotts of Overland Park, Kansas-based Universal Underwriters Group; Emphasis on one's strengths; Development of close relationship with the IS staff.

Describes how several corporate information systems (IS) departments succeed in preventing stress and burnout among their employees. Tension-releasing approach used by the IS department of the American Association of Retired Persons; Halloween party at Southwest Airlines Co.'s IS department; Efforts to encourage team work.

The article presents questions and answers related to bounded awareness associated with information technology in the U.S. Bounded awareness was defined as the tendency to fail to see critical information in our environment due to the focus on some subsegments. It was stated that one of the causes of bounded awareness is the failure to use information. INSETS: To Increase Your Awareness;TRY IT.

This article discusses the September 2004 report released by the Center for Urban Economic Development of the University of Illinois about the current status of IT labor market in the U.S. The report reveals that although the economy may be bouncing back, the IT job market is lagging behind. It further states that while there is not much reliable information on the extent of job losses resulting from offshore outsourcing, there is little doubt that it has contributed to the soaring unemployment rates in the industry.

This article presents an interview with Geoffrey A. Moore, a managing director of TCG Advisors LLC in San Mateo, California. Information technology is an enabler of innovation. With disruptive and application innovation, the technologies that matter most are about communication and collaboration. People have been talking about concurrent engineering and collaboration problems for 20 years, but the clients of the company say communication and collaboration are still not what they want them to be. Information technology has a long way to go to be better at those. With product and process innovation, where companies are ramping up and seeing hypergrowth, laying down the transactional systems really matters, and designing for scalability is a huge issue. Information technology gets very focused and even a bit siloed because at this point the functions in the company that it serves tend to be siloed. During this hypergrowth phase a company is growing so fast you may want to talk across functions, but there is no time to talk to anyone. Companies and information technology tend to build those silos that they spend the rest of their lives trying to deconstruct, but there is no easy way around it. Whenever you outsource, you need great visibility and control systems. Information technology has fallen behind here. Information technology systems tend to be about productivity for in-house workers. When we do the work, we are not so worried about visibility and control because management takes care of that. Structural innovation is all about merging companies and merging information technology.

This section presents updates on promotions and resignations of information technology (IT) executives in the U.S. as of April 1, 2004. Kelly Heitmann has joined KVH Industries Inc. as chief information officer (CIO). KVH designs and manufactures products for mobile communication, navigation, and industrial applications. In June 2004, Michael D. Hill will retire as CIO of PPL Corp. He will be succeeded by Edward T. Novak. Novak comes PPL from Accenture Ltd., where he was lead partner for strategic IT effectiveness. Meanwhile, SSA Global Technologies Inc., a provider of IT products and services, announced the appointment of Carlos E. Galarce as CIO, citing his experience in assimilating systems after acquisitions. Galarce has worked at APAC Customer Services Inc., Automatic Data Processing Inc., Electronic Data Systems Corp., and Sears, Roebuck, and Co. In a separate news, Mike Czinege has been named senior vice president and CIO at Applebee's International Inc. Czinege previously served as executive vice president of North American operations at Celerant Consulting and as CEO of the telecommunications, media, and network outsourcing business at Cap Gemini Ernst & young.

This article presents an interview with Thomas W. Malone, professor of management at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He defines an internal market as an arrangement where people inside a single company buy and sell things to each other for money or some kind of internal points. Internal markets are an intriguing way that people throughout a company can exchange much more rapidly and widely in a way that lets lots more people make decisions for themselves instead of just relying on people above them to tell them what to do. Information technology greatly reduces the cost and difficulties of having broad internal markets and therefore makes them more feasible in many more situations than they would have been in the past. According to Malone, MIT worked on a project with Intel to develop a scenario for how they could use an internal market to allocate their manufacturing capacity. Plant managers would sell futures contracts for a certain number of products to be delivered at a certain time in the future, and salespeople would buy those contracts in order to resell those products to their own external customers. Through the process of supply and demand, prices for different products at different times would vary.

Reports on the effort of U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop a self-aware computer. Role of cognitive systems; Ability of the self-aware system to outsmart terrorists; Information on self-explaining, self-debugging systems.

Presents information on force majeure clauses in information technology (IT) contracts in the U.S. Background on force majeure; Impact of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S. on force majeure clauses in IT contracts; Background on problems regarding force majeure clauses in IT contracts.

Presents information on a program in Chicago, Illinois called i.c.stars, which stands for inner-city stars. Details of how the program works which help people develop information technology skills; Features of the program; Functions of the i.s.stars alumni association.

Details a study which focuses on the women executives of several information technology (IT) companies in the U.S. Positions commonly handled by women in IT companies; Recommendations given to women who are planning to join the IT industry; Significance of flexibility and social networks in the technology industry.

Discusses the effect of the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States on the attitude towards Muslim American information technology (IT) workers. Significance of ignorance to the safety threats faced by Muslim Americans; Abuses experienced by Muslim Americans after the attacks; Information on the experiences of Mohanbir Sawhney, a Muslim American involved in the IT industry.

Presents tips for information technology managers on helping their employees cope from a disaster such as the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. Remarks from Brian Kilcourse, chief information officer at Longs Drug Stores Corp.; Advice to managers.

Discusses the employment of women in the information technology (IT) industry in the United States. Attractiveness of IT to girls; Views on the kind of job interviews in the IT industry.

Focuses on the move of the business community in Charlotte, North Carolina in helping students to meet its educational needs. Details on the Adopt-A-School program sponsored by the chamber of commerce and local businesses; Lessons offered by volunteers to students.

Focuses on how women can leverage the visibility and status many achieved as year 2000 project managers, which was discussed at the annual meeting of the Association of Women in Computing. Some of the work processes in the Y2K that women had done; Success of JoseMarie Griffiths, chief information officer at the University of Michigan.

Focuses on the impact of electronic commerce on business enterprises in the United States. Shortage of technical people in the US; Awareness of people on e-commerce; Barriers that tend to inhibit the progress in e-commerce; Need for change in organizational and management structures to adapt to e-commerce.

Reports that the most important year 2000 date conversion (Y2K) problem activity in the United States is to initiate or respond to a year 2000 lawsuit. Description of Year 2000 Readiness and Responsibility Act; How to respond to a lawsuit; Tips to help information technology managers prepare for legal repercussions of a Y2K failure.

Reflects on the role of women in engineering or technology related professions. Prediction of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics on the demand for computer engineers; Purpose of the Picker Program in Engineering Tehnology at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts; Demand for technologists with liberal arts skills.

Provides information on the Annual East Coast conference of Women in Technology International (WITI) to be held in Boston, Massachusetts, in September 1999. Background information on WITI; Description of WITI conferences; Impact of the conferences on the participants.

Reports on the status of computer software regulations in the United States known as Article 2B. Disagreement between the American Law Institute and National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws; Provisions of the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act; User groups' allegations that 2B favors vendors.