POSTING #43

"The Day the Falls Stood Still" by Cathy Marie Buchanan; A Computer Program to Match Workers and Jobs; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

"The Day the Falls Stood Still" by Cathy Marie Buchanan

The Niagara Peninsula is a small place.

At a party in Niagara Falls a couple of months ago we met a woman who told us that her daughter was about to have her first novel published. The proud mom said that the book---set in Niagara Falls during the early 1900s---was based loosely on the famous Hill family, a family of 'river people' who rescued people and recovered bodies from the Niagara River and who dared the rapids, the whirlpool and even the Falls. Click here for more information on the Hills and on the day the falls stood still.

Then a few weeks ago the daughter, Cathy Buchanan, spoke about the book at a meeting that Pat attended.

We have both read the book and can highly recommend it. It is well plotted, populated with vivid characters and full of wonderful descriptions of the Falls and the River.

We understand that it is being translated into a number of foreign languages. I am sure that movie producers are drooling over it---what could be better than a great story with the Falls as a backdrop.


A Computer Program to Match Workers and Jobs

The star at an international conference on Employment Services in the early 1970s was a studious-looking researcher in his mid-40s from an employment service in a Western country. He had recently received approval from his government to develop a computer system to match workers and jobs. As he wandered from booth to booth, delegates came up to him with congratulations and questions on how he had managed to pull off this coup.

He took all this attention with modesty but with obvious enjoyment.

The stars at these international conferences were usually hard-driving administrators, not researchers.

His story was fascinating.

Working in the research division of his employment services, he had tried to imagine how computers could be harnessed to take over some of the time-consuming, repetitive tasks performed in the local employment offices.

One of the most labour-intensive tasks in the local offices was to take job vacancies given to them by employers and go through hundreds or thousands of paper applications of unemployed workers in order to find qualified people to send to the employers.

Although they were still new in the late 1960s, computers had already shown that they could store and retrieve enormous amounts of data. The researcher asked himself whether it would be possible to store all the jobs in one data base, the jobs in another and then 'run' the two files against each other.

In this way, a job for an electrician could be matched with electricians in the worker file. Once the computer had done this, employees in the local office could contact the electricians and refer them to the electrical contractor.

The more the researcher studied the idea, the more it seemed to be worth a feasibility study. He prepared a proposal and included a cost of $150,000. He thought that the study could be conducted for about $75,000 but he had learned from experience that his superiors usually cut budget proposals in half.

His boss liked the idea very much. Computers were 'hot' and even if he didn't really understand how they worked, it would be good to be seen to be embracing this new technology. But, he said, it would be better to ask for $300,000 because the managers up the line would undoubtedly cut the proposed budget.

The next level also liked the idea but suggested boosting the budget to $750,000---again because of possible cuts up the line. The researcher reminded his boss that this was just a small feasibility study but his manager said that he should relax. It was clear that his idea was a winner, and he should start to think big.

Finally, the proposal reached the top public servant, the person who reported to a political appointee. He too liked the proposal but being concerned about recent cost-cutting decisions from the political level doubled the budget to $1,500,000.

To the surprise of the public servants, the politicians liked the idea. Unemployment was high at the time and they wanted to be seen to be doing something to fight it.

But the politicians didn't like the idea of a 'feasibility study'---that wouldn't impress voters. This sounded like a simple task---matching jobs and workers--and everyone knew about the awesome power of computers. Why not, the politicians argued, go directly to the development and installation of a matching system in all local offices?

The researcher pleaded for a feasibility study to be sure that the idea worked but was overruled. Instead he was told that he would head up an implementation team with a goal of 'making it happen'. When asked how much money it would take, he consulted some computer companies and after some back-of-the envelope calculations came up with an estimate of $70 million for all the computers and software.

That estimate was included in the organization's annual budget and supporting legislation was passed requiring all regions of the employment service to have the new system installed and operating in three years.

It was at that point that I met the researcher at the international conference. It was no wonder that delegates from the employment services in other countries wanted to find out how he had done it. None of us had ever heard of an idea getting such a rapid and generous reception.

I ran into the researcher again two years later at another conference. What a change! He was wandering alone from booth to booth, his head down looking tired and dejected.

One of his colleagues told me that contracts had been given, people hired, programs written, and computers purchased but it hadn't been possible to get the matching to work effectively. The program had been scrapped, the researcher was back doing research, his career in shreds.

The lesson was that computers were not yet ready to do the complex assessments that a skilled employment official could make about which worker was likely to meet the needs of a particular job vacancy.

Matching workers and jobs is tough. For example, take electricians. Despite the fact that they all have to pass competency exams, they are not all the same. Some prefer to work in residential, others in industrial fields. Among those in residential, some prefer to work in new homes, others in existing homes. Some belong to unions, others don't. Some are willing to travel considerable distances to work, others are not. And on and on.

Matching of workers and jobs had to wait for the development of more sophisticated soft and hard technologies. Now, some 40 years later, and after the investment of millions of dollars by employment services around the world, systems such as the Canada Job Bank are pretty good. They produce reasonable matches at low cost but no one would claim that they produce the kind of matches that the enthusiastic proponents thought would be possible back in the early 1970s.


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The recent stories about the Ontario Government's eHealth computer program made me recall the above story. Like job matching, the computerization of health records makes a lot of sense. I suspect, however, that the actual computerization of health records is proving to be horrendously complex.

When one adds in the temptations that always accompany large budgets and a tight time frame for completion, it is no wonder there are problems with eHealth.


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

I have written in a number of postings about my fascination with Canada Geese.

This summer I have watched as a flock of 30 or 40 geese visits the park behind our house. They arrive, stay for a few days and then take off.

Perhaps they are different geese, but I like to think that they are the same geese---Virgil's 2009 flock.

This week the town decided to put in a meandering, six-foot-wide asphalt path in the park, a path that makes it easier for moms to push their strollers to a well-equipped play area with slides, swings and so on.

The geese flew back just after the path was completed. As I watched they landed on either side of the path---no one landed on the path. They waddled (they are getting quite plump, ready for the trip south) along either side of the walk, studying it.

They may have been trying to figure out the purpose of the path, or more realistically, trying to figure out whether it was dangerous or not.

No one walked on it.

Finally, a particularly large goose, perhaps the patriarch, stepped onto the walk and walked gingerly back and forth across it and then walked its full length.

Having accomplished that, he stood in the middle of the walk and stretched his neck and head up in the sentinel-posture, watching for dogs or other threats while the rest of the flock fed on the grass.

At one point, another goose started to climb onto the path but the sentinel lunged at him with wings flapping. The goose backed off.

Was the patriarch playing 'I'm King of the Castle', or was he worried that the path posed some threat that only he was wise enough to withstand?

I don't know.

The geese have left us once again.

I am waiting to see whether when they return they will wander across and along the path, or will they still avoid it.

Interesting critters!


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See you next Sunday for Posting #44 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.