Staff - Mrs E McStocker HOD, Mrs A McGinn. Technician Mr T McKinless.

On the 20th January 1999 myself and my 'Information Technology' class went on a trip to N.I.E. Headquarters at Danesfort in Belfast.
We were greeted by our guide for the day Mr Gordon Porter. Gordon explained the outline of the day and some necessary safety measures, we then entered the main building. We were divided into two groups. My group went first to the computer suite where Alastair showed us some up-to-date technology from billing systems to final demands. The room was especially designed for low water moisture in the walls and it has a air conditioning heating system to ensure it stays at the same temperature all the time. This room is also in operation 24 hours a day. The cost of the technology in the room is approximately somewhere in the region of £6,000,000, and it is constantly being updated.
We then entered a room where security was very much in evidence special passes and numbers had to be keyed in to gain entry. Here an employee called Kevin talked to us about the Internet and E-mail, he also told us how the company were preparing for the 'Millennium Bug' and how they dealt with 'Hackers', their software he said was fully secured to inhibit this.
After this we went downstairs to a demonstration from Anne, She showed us the old way bills used to be processed using a punch card and the language COBOL. Some of us had a go at punching our names it was very time consuming.
Soon after we split into smaller groups and went to various departments to learn about a topic each. The idea being we could all exchange information on our return to school. Our leader was Zoe and she explained lots of the N.I.E. Services to us, such as Paying systems, Casper and various promotions.
Then we had lunch and it was great, the canteen was really nice and we encountered a past pupil of St.Pius X who was on a years placement with N.I.E.. Final we left the main buildings and went to a different building on the Campus where a postgraduate student called Michael allowed us to use the Multimedia machines, we even got to play a game called 'Pinball'. We had a very interesting day and we all enjoyed it very much. I would highly recommend the N.I.E. Experience to anyone.

By Pat Keenan