Commonwealth Secretariat

The Commonwealth Secretariat is the civil service for the Commonwealth countries. I worked in the Technical Assistance Group where I was a member of a team of economists and programmers that developed a debt management and recording system. The system was used in the finance ministries and central banks of many countries, both within the Commonwealth and in other developing countries, particularly where the World Bank and IMF were involved in restructuring finances.

Software development

I was initially involved in converting the existing version written in 'C' with Informix 3.3 to Informix SQL and ESQL/C, and subsequently enhanced and redesigned parts of the system using 'C' and Informix 4GL/RDS-4GL. The development was done on a Compaq-386 running Xenix-386.

Consultancy projects

The World Bank employed me on a project in Bulgaria which computerised the Central Bank's loan portfolio during the debt restructuring that took place when the communist regime ended.

The Crown Agents, a department of the UK government, employed me on a number of projects that evaluated the existing debt systems of Ukraine, Moldova and Oman.