Questions about Y2K

Answers for common and uncommon questions. Thanks. - Richard Collins

Concerned Mother:  I am a mother with three small children under the age of five. How should I be preparing for y2k? And how can I prepare my children?

Richard:  My children are 10, 13, and 15 now;  but I remember very clearly.  Let me keep this very simple so that your children can understand it.  First, stay informed by reading and asking questions about your immediate community and those organizations which directly affect you.  How is your grocery store and its suppliers doing?  How is your gas station and its suppliers doing?  Are your electric and gas and water and sewage treatment and snow removal and city services on track?  Your husband's employer, are they prepared?  Are there any large employers in town who strongly affect the local economy, are they prepared?   Maybe you can make a game about it to better inform your children about the world outside your home.  Toy blocks and figures for the city, with pictures to help them get a sense of their outside world.  You might start clipping Y2K articles from the local paper to see if it makes a complete picture.  You can get together with other mothers to compare notes.

I am going to slowly stock up on canned goods and non-perishable foods and make copies of all important financial documents - bank statements and bills and check receipts.   As of today, March 15th, I am expecting delays in all basic goods and services.   Not life threatening, just like a severe snowstorm.  Keep asking questions of   your city and the organizations you depend on.  Teach your children to be prepared and to think broadly about community and global issues.

Fox: "Software Productivity Research Co. Burlington, Mass (5/19/98) had predicted that the probability of death or injury due to y2k is about 1%... now, does that mean a meer one percent chance that someone somewhere will die or be injured by y2k, or does it mean there's a 100% chance that 1% of the world's 6 billion people will be effected by injury or death. that's 60 million people. huh?  What numbers do your feel are realistic based on the statistical probabilities, even with stepped up funding and manpower going into the y2k effort, given the limited number of IT pros in the world?"

Richard:  You are right to be critical of such a 1% statement standing in isolation.   Do you think that computers so control the lives and destinies of people in the world that being without some of the computers would cause death and injury to tens of millions of people?  What else could they have meant?

• Suppose they were saying the probability of a y2k system failure causing death or injury is 1% and therefore, of the systems that fail, 1% might cause death or injury.   Gartner predicts about 800,000 mission critical system failures in the United States stretching over a multiyear period with many in the next 12 months.  Applying a 1% to that would give us 8,000 injuries and deaths.  That does not sound unreasonable, even though I only know of one death so far attributed to Y2K failure.   So I think the 1% applies to a particular set of Y2K failures, most likely the embedded kind.  I know of a fire engine that would not have started if it had not been found and corrected.  What do you think would have happened?
• I am looking into the question of availability of manpower to answer the question, "How long will it take to fix"?  We are currently spending about $300 billion a year in the US on Y2K or about $1 billion per working day.  Do we have everyone working that could be working?  If repair costs in the first days of 2000 are on the order of $30 billion, would that mean it will take 30 days to dig out - on average?
• One thing that Chernobyl and Three Mile Island and the recent nuclear plant test problem have in common is operators being presented with confusing information - and responding improperly.  Very few operators have been trained in recognizing and properly responding to Y2K failures in embedded systems.  There are at least 20 million of them out there.  Where are they?

Brook:  What businesses will be mostly affected by the y2k?

Richard:  Right now it looks like doctors offices, law offices, hospitals, construction, farming, food processing, and small businesses generally are farthest behind. But every industry has its laggards. There is a mix of cities, counties, and countries who are not preparing. If you are unlucky, you will be in a slow community, have a slow bank, or depend on a slow electrical supplier.

• If a doctor or lawyer's accounting system does not work, will that impact you?  If a breakfast cereal company's manufacturing process has to be shut down for a few days will that hurt them?  If a local business has to buy a new accounting system and retrain its people will that be costly? 
• If the only way to get a compliant system is to switch to the Windows 98 version of a program, will a company be willing and able to make the necessary upgrades in hardware, software and training - in the limited time left? 
• If a company made a major investment in automated manufacturing and distribution in the last several years, will they be prepared to upgrade all of it already? 
• Has your local fire department checked its fire engines and emergency communications systems?  Have your kids' schools checked the fire alarm, heating and security systems? 
• If you have a power plant or pipeline or refinery or chemical plant or major manufacturing plant in your community, which has made major investments in automation in the last 5-10 years, have you asked them about their Y2K project?

Gloria: "Aside from all of these pc problems, what are the real dangers outside of the office? I mean, my main concern is how the religious nuts are going to act, and how the prison systems will handle y2k without security.  I'm still not quite sure what the deal is with Sept. 9,99.  "  sala8226@blue.unco.edu

Richard:  Let me try to answer these in order:

• If you are at work, then the impacts on you personally start with your PC, then network and servers, building systems, business-related equipment, then outside services and business partners. At a community level, there are electric, gas, water, sewer, transportion, emergency and related systems.  These are not problems unless not addressed.
• You are correct that over-reaction is a problem, just as under-reaction.  A community that does not allocate sufficient time and resources to finding and correcting their Y2K problems will be left with the mess to deal with when things break.   Over-reaction is wasteful of time and resources that could better be spent focused on what needs to be done.  One thing that keeps me focussed is to constantly ask myself, "What will preparations for total breakdown of society cost? then ask How much does it cost to find out for sure?  If I spend $2000 to put in a generator because I think the electric company might break down, how much does it cost to find out what the electric company is doing?  A phone call, an internet visit, a first class stamp and letter?
• Prisons should not be a problem.  If you have a prison near you and have concerns, then ask them for a Y2K Disclosure Statement.  Please read Jon Huntress' article for an enjoyable discussion of Y2K and prisons.
• September 9, 1999 is 9/9/99.  Many (not a high percentage, just many) programs use 9/9/99 as unknown and will sometimes reject records with that date.  So when September 9, 1999 comes for real, the program will throw out the good with the bad.   It will not know that those are valid dates.

Robert:  I'm more worried about the possibility of a second depression before and during the year 2000. What is your view on this subject?  BoldBunk@aol.com

Richard:  Yardeni and others expect a strong depression.    Most of the bankers expect this will be at most a percent of GNP hiccup    And the market analysts are predicting a mini-boom and bust.  If a significant number of companies do not finish their Y2K programs with time to spare, we will be counting right to the last minute. I think it works like this.  If a company does not finish on time, they will have spent all of their up-front money and will suffer the costs of running with a broken system or doing without.  Too many companies did not start until this year.  The Gartner rule is probably fairly true - it takes about 30 months to go through the full Y2K program.  Can this be shortened to 12 months?   I do not think we have found any management silver bullets to make large software projects go on time.  Add to that the embedded engineering projects and it looks pretty dim for completing on time.  At this point I am using a rough rule that says it will cost 10 times as much to repair after the fact as to prepare (an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure).  So if a project gets 90% done on time, the other 10% will cost them as much as all they have spent so far - plus a little.  If a company does nothing, it could cost them up to 10 times as much as they originally would have.  In some cases this means companies going out of business.  Can it drop us by 10-15% of GNP?  Yes, if the next couple of months show more and more organizations falling behind schedule.  It will be interesting to watch.

Steven: "Hello, When was Y2K first recognised and do you know of the first ever references, in the literature, that addressed this matter?   Thank you, Steven Foley K962756@kingston.ac.uk "

Fox:  What does it matter who or when or where the seeds of the y2k problem started?  Is this question one to enable us to assess blame?  How does that help to solve the problems that this world must endure?  Who cares?   The reality is here.  Let's concentrate on the present so we can solve the future, okay? foxheater@aol.com

Richard: We need the past and history to guide us in the future.   If we do not learn from our mistakes, how can we avoid similar ones?  I knew about this problem in the late sixties, not as a global crisis, but learning programming "best practices".  Many people are curious, how could this have happened?   Are we doing things like this right now that will come back to haunt us?   Someone needs to be writing the history of this mess.