N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. tit. 9 § 4300.26

Current through Register Vol. 46, No. 50, December 11, 2024

Section 4300.26 - General management requirements

(a) Programming.

(1) A totalisator company shall develop and maintain written procedure manuals that outline structured programming methods used by the programmers. The manuals must give the programmers sufficient information to understand the programming methodologies, base operating systems, and maintenance procedures.

(2) The totalisator company shall develop and maintain a written Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) that requires sign-offs at pertinent checkpoints. The SDLC must address the following or the equivalent as acceptable to the commission:

(i) a procedure for accepting written requests for systems design or major program changes from users and a method for handling and recording these requests;

(ii) the feasibility study stage;

(iii) the general systems design stage;

(iv) detailed systems specification;

(v) program testing;

(vi) system testing;

(vii) conversion; and

(viii) systems acceptance by the totalisator company.

(3) A totalisator company must develop and follow procedures to manage all program changes without regard to the complexity of the modification. The procedures must at a minimum:

(i) establish controls to prevent unauthorized and potentially inaccurate program changes from being incorporated into the production environment;

(ii) regulate both scheduled and emergency changes to ensure the integrity of the computer system;

(iii) permit revisions of computer programs only after receiving a written or electronic request from a user, submitted on a sequentially numbered change request form, which is maintained;

(iv) require program changes to be developed, tested, and compiled only in a test environment that is not connected to an on-line totalisator network;

(v) require all program changes to be thoroughly tested, reviewed and approved by a totalisator company supervisor before being placed into operation; and

(vi) maintain a written or electronic log to be made available to the commission upon request when programmers have physical access to the totalisator room or electronic access to the operation environment.

(4) Before a totalisator company may place a major programming revision into production or transfer any data affected by the revision from the test environment to the production environment, the totalisator company must follow the procedures for changes to totalisator software found in section 4300.25(d) of this Part.

(b) Totalisator operations. A totalisator company shall maintain a written operations manual for each totalisator system. The manual must clarify the authority, duties, responsibilities, and lines of communication for totalisator operators and network managers. The manual must contain sufficient detail to ensure totalisator personnel understand their job duties. The operations manual must include complete documentation for operation of the totalisator system and its software, including at a minimum:

(1) the duties described in section 4300.27 of this Part (relating to personnel requirements);

(2) clearly defined restrictions for totalisator room access;

(3) general block diagrams of program options (menu tree) available to totalisator operators;

(4) a glossary of terms used in reports, including formulas for calculating the displayed results;

(5) the relationship, if any, between information contained in reports;

(6) start-up and shutdown procedures;

(7) general operating procedures;

(8) restart and recovery procedures; and

(9) emergency procedures, including a list of individuals to notify if a system requires an emergency revision.

N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. Tit. 9 § 4300.26