In 1969 the Saginaw, Michigan City School System affiliated with the Remotely Accessible Management System (RAMS) developed by the Oakland Schools, a regional service agency. The affiliation enabled Saginaw to move into computerized data processing with minimal costs for programing personnel, systems specialists, hardware, software, and operating personnel. Program packages were developed to run data processing operations in the areas of finance, personnel, and student records. The district uses a Remcon 2780 terminal and relies heavily upon Request, a procedure which the user employs to obtain information from a file by writing a program to format reports that meet particular needs. On the whole, Saginaw's experience with the time-shared system has been a successful one, largely due to the service orientation of the central computer facility of RAMS and to the strong inservice training provided to the local district personnel. (PB)