Not long ago, the capital of Kansas District Court in Topeka made a motion to turn off their HP 3000s. During the report on that affair -- one that took the court system offline for a week -- the IT managers explained that part of the migration process would include cleaning up the data being moved off an HP 3000.

This data conversion is one of the most important attributes of this project and is carefully being implemented by continuously and repeatedly checking thousands of data elements to ensure that all data converted is “clean” data which is essential to all users. When we finally “go live,” we would sincerely appreciate your careful review of data as you use the system.

Not exactly a great plan, checking on data integrity so late in the 3000's lifecycle, said ScreenJet's Alan Yeo. The vendor who supplies tools and service for migrations has criticism for the court's strategy statement that "we either move on to another system or we go back to paper and pen."

"Interesting, that pen and paper comment," Yeo said. "It has the ring of someone saying that we have an old car that's running reliably, but because it might break down at some time, the only options are to go back to walking or buy a Fisker." The Fisker, for those who might not know, was a car developed in 2008 as one of the very first plug-in hybrid models. About 2,000 were built before the company went bankrupt. Moving to any new technology, on wheels or online, should be an improvement over what's in place -- not an alternative to ancient practices.

"Oh, and what's all this crap about having to clean the data?" Yeo added. "That's like saying I'll only bother cleaning the house that I live in when I move. Yes, sure you don't want to move crap in a migration. But you probably should have been doing some housekeeping whilst you lived in the place. Blaming the house when you got it dirty doesn't really wash!"