Contemplating the final act in last night’s dream brought to mind LAMP. The License Application Mitigation Project (LAMP) was an information technology (IT) project in the Washington State Department of Licensing (DOL) in the 90s in an effort to consolidate IT software programs into a consistent, cohesive program across multiple IT services within DOL. (Did I lose you already?) Imagine, for example, the driver’s licensing program written in software language that can no longer be effectively changed after decades of tweaking. It can’t access vehicle licensing nor cross reference it in any way as vehicle software was developed separately. Neither could communicate with the other. (Whose dang abandoned car is this? Where does the fool live now? Or, we’ve lost Joceile Moore. What’s the license number for her vehicle?) Getting information from one system to the other required ridiculous amounts of staff time.
This hamstrung overall systemic changes, law enforcement requests, and other entities needing information. (Systems that couldn’t communicate with others of their kind sound very quaint now.) Millions of lines of patched code created ongoing bugs and glitches requiring hours of correction and tinkering by IT professionals (at a very high rate of pay, I might add) which required inserting additional lines of code. (I am not a software engineer. This is my lay understanding so don’t quote me.) LAMP was the first of its kind for the department though not the first large scale attempt for state government. The legislature approved money for the project. (The acronym stuck but I had to look up the words behind it.)
I joined Personnel (now called human resources or the universally beloved term “HR” by employees everywhere) at DOL in December 1995. As a personnel officer, I supported the IT division but not the LAMP project which was a separate entity with its own budget, staffing, and leadership. I worked with personnel officers who supported project employees. Staff from the project and IT overlapped and transferred between divisions based on staffing needs. LAMP was allowed to hire contract workers with limited rights and no union affiliation. (My part-time position was originally funded by LAMP. Each employee position in state government is funded by a division budget. Because I didn’t directly support LAMP, technically my position shouldn’t have been funded out of that budget. But, who was checking? My management had dire labor needs and I had dire employment needs.)
Staffed by skilled professionals, LAMP was plagued by missed deadlines and cost overruns. The work was incredibly complex. A change here affected others down the line requiring follow up and correction. (If one wanted to create endless high paying opportunities, this was a trough. Of course, this was never the case.) Project employees were under constant pressure, long hours, and continued threats that time was running out from state leadership, an oversight board, and the legislature. With each passed deadline, the agency pled for more time. Three more months led to six which led to twelve. Completion was always on the horizon.
Employees and managers I respected were involved. With a heavy heart, agency leadership was forced to terminate the LAMP project before completion prior to the year 2000* resulting in loss of employment for many, contract terminations, and layoffs. Agency employees were dispirited. (Cynics would say it had wasted millions.) Personnel assigned all its staff to manage position reductions and determine lay-off options for individuals. (Notifying employees of lay-off options is also known as the second worse job in human resource management.) Many employees’ only option was termination. (Known as the worst job human resources.) I was tapped to support staff facing employment uncertainty. (Eventually, I pointed out to my supervisor I was also facing employment uncertainty as my position was entirely funded by the condemned budget. “Oh, I never thought of that,” she said. “Do you need support?) The project director was a respected and beloved man. (I’ve forgotten his name.) He was kind to me (and approved my funding). He became ill towards the end. I don’t think he lived long after.
I have memories of many good people leaving by the end of the century. Planning for Y2K also affected massive numbers of records. With calendars flipping to the year 2000, Y2K ended with either much ado about nothing or such success that some believed it had never actually been a threat. [For the younger generation, Y2K related to results of a long standing software design identifying years by only two digits. The original design economized limited early computer processing power and memory. As the year 2000 neared, a software reckoning approached. Dates would be interpreted incorrectly by computer systems worldwide. Anyone born in 2001 would be mistaken by computer programs as born in 1901, a nightmare for driver’s licenses and any other data referencing dates.]
Into the this timeline, I start my dream...
We were in hour 28 of a new IT crisis. We were short staffed. Anyone who could handle a keyboard was enlisted to help. It was beyond the capabilities for many staff who’d been roped in. Supervisors were on vacation. Staff were elevated in the emergency for positions they weren’t qualified for. We were recording everything so we’d know later what we did for people who knew what they were doing to backtrack and fix later. We couldn’t let anyone go for poor performance because we didn’t have enough bodies. My laptop memory was filling up. All our laptops were running out of memory. (Could this be a metaphor?)
Finally we started calling IT employees who had left the agency for one reason or another years or decades prior to come back and help. I was discovering them with laptops, commandeering unoccupied offices and other available spaces, trying to keep things moving. Glad to see so many of them, I was still intimidated by their brilliance. When I was leaving for a break, former employees repeatedly came to the door needing help with access because they no longer had keys. (We didn’t have keycards.)
I greeted them with surprise and delight because I hadn’t seen them in so long. I met an old friend at the door. “Wow,” I said, “It’s like I’m in the last season at the end of a long series when they bring back old characters in a dream sequence.” (If you’ve ever been tortured by “Grey’s Anatomy,” you know what I mean.)
With a wry smile she said, “That’s because we are.” Suddenly, I knew she was right. We were in the last season of a long series.
Exhausted, I remained outside. Walking through city streets, there was social upheaval all around. With the usual commuters in buses and cars competing with bicyclists and pedestrians, stunned refugees in various states of clothing threaded their way with backpacks, rolling luggage, and occasional grocery carts filled with worldly belongings.
I met a friend in this throng of humanity. It was literally and figuratively an uphill climb. Ultimately, I was in a car following packed cars around a great coast of flat wastelands. Unable to understand why cars continued to follow the road, I veered off. It looked smooth but was in fact a dense, sticky combination of oily sand and mud. The car slowed and lost traction. “Oh,” I thought, “this is why no no one goes out here.” Before getting stuck, I worked the car back to the road, continuing to follow others into an uncertain future for me, my partner, and my child.
Does the dream mean anything? It’s hard to know other than we’re in for a rough ride. I’ll hold onto those I love and be kind to those I don’t as the only sure course in the road ahead. Who will do the same? I can only hope they show up at the door so I can let them in and get them settled to help in the crisis.
In a plea for Life, reporting from the front.
Joceile
6.11.22
(2022, that is.)
[Foggy red lake sunrise signaling bad weather ahead.]
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