Y2K -- A Broader Perspective

[MICHAEL S FORD <MFORD@pantex.com>]

The following was shared with me [it's very long!] and
while the Y2K discussion on RADSAFE has been
concentrating on equipment, a broader perspective
involves a look at organizational (business or institutions),
societal, and familial impacts.  Here's a Y2K look from a
pretty reputable source.......

Off Topic?  I'll let you decide.... I'll accept any flames you
wish to send.  On the other hand, you might want to look
and see what your company, school, city, state, etc. is
doing about Y2K.
v/r
Michael Ford
mford@pantex.com
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>....
>CTRL@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
>Subject: 	[DISASTER] Ed Yourdon: Y2K Pro's are
Terrified
>
>Ed Yourdon is highly respected in mainframe
programming circles. He is co-author, along with his
daughter, of the new book, "Time Bomb 2000" which is the
best layman's introduction to the Y2K crisis to date. Ed
Yourdon will tell you that Y2K (year 2000 computer
problems) pose a direct threat to the physical well being of
every person on the planet whose lives are influenced in
any way by computers or electronic circuitry--that's most of
us.
>
>Ed's letter below was written February 25,1998, and is his
response to a letter sent to him from an apparently clueless
member of a usenet rural life newsgroup.
>
>Reading Ed's letter, you're getting a good review of what
is now known and accepted as accurate about how the
Y2K computer problems are shaping up. Remember all the
problems Ed addresses are interconnected and the worst
failures will likely happen virtually simultaneously world
wide. Virtually everything dependent on computers and
software will be paralyzed and rendered dysfunctional.
Mainframe failures will have the widest impact but virtually
every machine, vehicle, or electrical device with any
reactive, programmable or controller circuitry is suspect as
being subject to potential failure. Desktop PC's that are not
fully Y2K compatible are still being sold as are many, many
software packages, including programs from Microsoft and
other major companies.
>
>To date, there has been no unqualified announcement of
a successfully completed Y2K remediation program from
any major government entity or from any Fortune 1000
company or from any major market center banks or from
any other major financial institutions, anywhere in the
world.
>
>There are current Y2K impacts being noticed and most
people who have studied the problem believe those
impacts will happen more and more frequently up to and
through rollover into the year 2000. Main frame computers
have been primed for the last forty years to shut down or
take other now unfortunate actions when they discover 99
in a date field. Computer science and programming
textbooks used to advocate such uses of 99 because the
authors expected programs, computers, machines and
devices would have much shorter useful lives. Instead,
short-sighted, cut corner thinking has caused those legacy
programs to be maintained and expanded without attention
to the ticking bombs they contain. 

>Now the Y2K dues our society is about to pay may
bankrupt us because of the compounded effects of inertia
and unfortunate management practices. The State of New
York could experience serious computer problems as early
as April 1, 1998, when it enters its 1999 fiscal year. July 1,
1998 is when the majority of States enter their fiscal year
'99 and the Federal government fiscal year 1999 follows on
October first.  No  one knows how bad the 99 factor or the
fiscal year problems might be.
>
>The warm up for the January 1, 2000 computer meltdown
includes much more than the  fiscal year problems. There
are also what are known as "look ahead" problems where
programs cause computers to crash or behave
unpredictably over amortization or depreciation or
inventory needs or budget projections or any other matter
involving data or calculations dealing with dates ending in
00 and beyond.
>
>There are many other isolated problems expected before
2000 but January 1, 2000, while expected to be a
catastrophic computer event, will not necessarily be the
final failure date. Any residual computer infrastructure
remaining intact and functioning in 2000 will face
continuing problems throughout that year with known
crisis dates including virtually all of January, February 29
(leap year) and March 1,  and before and after April 1, July
1, October 1, and year end reporting during December.
>
>At this writing there is still 22 months to prepare for what
is being called by very reputable and responsible people
"the worst industrial disaster of all time." But the best
people in the business say twenty two months is not
enough time to prevent the onslaught.
>
>If you aren't making preparation for the harshest long
term catastrophic situation you can conceive of which
might be survivable, you can expect to be one of the huge
numbers of casualties of Y2K.>Preparation may not
guarantee survival but it is now almost a given that without
serious personal preparation the odds are you and your
family will experience large scale physical threats and
worse in January of the year 2000. There are those who
argue that you should  worry about societal disruptions
even sooner than 2000.
>
>Those political mavens reading this should wonder why
political institutions world wide are being so passive in the
face of their imminent demise. National governments and
politicians do not naturally die without violent resistance.
The federal government and politicians are offering only
making token public efforts toward facing and working on
this crisis which could obviously destroy the US as well as
every other government on the planet. And the miniscule
government Y2K efforts are even stranger in the face of
>looming financial market stressors which can only
exacerbate the Y2K problems. The two problems
compounding together could lead to a total destruction of
all existing currencies. 

>By 2000 military command and control will be
non-existent and it seems likely most hi-tech weapons
systems will be non-functional.  Two weeks ago the Y2K
honcho for the US Department of Defense resigned and his
resignation was immediately followed by the resignations
of his two top assistants, leaving no one with the ability to
rapidly step into this critical national defense command
position. No one wants to command a sinking ship.
>*********************************************************
>Last week it was announced publicly that Y2K defective
embedded circuitry programming has been found in the
United States nuclear missile launch systems. Face it, Y2K
is serious stuff.
>*********************************************************
>And all the while governments world-wide are maintaining
a public posture of being essentially indifferent to this
threat that has been recognized among programmers for
over twenty years. In fact, European leaders insist
European Financial Union concerns, a fully arbitrary matter,
must be in place by 1999, even at the expense of delaying
Y2K programming which has no deadline flexibility.
>
>We are privileged to have lived in the best of times. Soon
things are going to get much worse but there will be fewer
of us alive to remember. Computers that have been
inadequately programmed to be unable to accurately
recognize and calculate with four digit years and years
ending in 99 or 00 are about to disrupt the world as we
know it.
>
>Allen Comstock
>comstock@wild-life.com
>
>ps.  Copy this message to all those in your circle of
influence.  Everyone deserves a chance to have advance
warning of what is a guaranteed fast approaching
massively destructive event. It's time to scream "FIRE" in
the burning theater.
>
>-------------Begin Forwarded Material------------------
>
>The following letter was written by Ed Yourdon to a
member of the Homestead list and I thought some of you
might be interested.  Remember some of the people he
mentions in his letter are the top dogs in the industries he
is referring to so their opinion should not be brushed off as
"fear mongers." Some of them are: Arthur Levitt, Edward
Yardeni, Alan Greenspan, Stephen Horn, and, why hell Ed
Yourdon is himself a significantly significant computer
industry figure.
>
>Joseph
>
>Begin Letter:
>
>Greetings from Montreal... Thanks for your mail...
>
>Here's something your homestead group might want to
consider:
>
>There are approx 9,000 electric utility plants in the U.S.,
including 108 nuclear plants, and at the present time (Feb
25, 1998), NONE of them are Y2K compliant. None. Zero.
Zip. Nada. Last survey that I saw indicated that one-third
had not started any Y2K effort at all, one third were
seriously behind schedule, and one-third were
on-schedule.  This is not an exaggeration; NONE of the
nuclear plants are compliant, and the Nuclear Regulatory
Agency (NRC) is currently drafting a letter to the plant
operators to warn them of their vulnerability and liability.

>The Chairman of the SEC, Arthur Levitt, has drafted a
letter to the non-nuclear agencies, also warning them of
their Y2K exposure; this will probably go out in the next
week or two.  Most likely scenario: 20-30% of the utility
plants will suffer at least sporadic Y2K problems on
1/1/2000, primarily with their embedded systems, including
intermittent blackouts; and it's not at all beyond the realm
of possibility that portions of the nation's power grid will be
brought down for several hours, days, or weeks. Don't take
my word for it; take a look at the web sites of two
Y2K-oriented utility experts,
>
>Roleigh Martin    
(http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/roleigh_martin/)   and
>Rick Cowles (http://www.euy2k.com/index.htm).

>Both of them think the situation will be MUCH worse than
what I've suggested.
>
>If you're a computer professional, you may be aware of
the statistics for project success, whether's it's utility plants
or any other kind of software project: even if you
completely eliminate project failures caused by budget
problems, the data that we have from the last 30 years of
software projects tells us that 15% of all projects are late,
and 25% are cancelled before completion.  The projects
that are late turn out to be late by approx 7.6 months; for
large projects (1+ million lines of code), the
behind-schedule projects are late by an average of 13.8
months, and for VERY large projects (10+ million lines of
code), the behind-schedule projects are late by an average
of 25 months.  This is not an exaggeration; I can give you
citations of books and references if you care to see the
details.  And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to conclude
that this does not bode well for Y2K projects.
>
>So much for utilities (and note that I haven't commented
on water supply, oil, gas, and sewage).  When it comes to
banks, consider these statistics: there are approx 11,000
banks in this country.  Even taking into account the
holding companies that own several small banks, and the
banks that outsource their IT development to service
bureaus, you have to assume that there are at least 5,000
separate enterprise-level banking software systems that
need to be fixed.  The numbers from one large banking
institution are instructive: Bank of America currently has an
army of 1,000 programmers working on 250 million lines of
code, and as of late Jan 1998, they reported they were 1/3
of the way done.  More statistics from another large bank:
Chase Manhattan was quoted in an article in the NY Times
last October as saying they have interfaces with 2,950
external entities. Naturally, we can be highly confident that
all 2,950 will be Y2K compliant with no problems, right? ...
nevertheless, it's interesting that Edward Yardeni, chief
economist of Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, predicts that
between 5% and 20% of the small banks in the U.S. will fail
because of Y2K problems. That's the good news; the bad
news is that Europe is approx one year behind us and is
dangerously distracted by their Eurocurrency projects,
Latin American is sound asleep, and Asia is preoccupied
with its current financial crises.  If you're a computer-literate
person, here's an interesting statistic: 70% of the Japanese
banking systems are inhouse, customized systems, while
in the U.S., 70% of the banking systems are packages. 
Conclusion:  maybe the international banking system will
survive, but when Alan Greenspan says Y2K could be a
serious problem (as he did today, in his testimony to the 
>Senate) you'd better pay attention. From my perspective,
this is not a theorectical, academic issue: this affects my
retirement savings and it's not something I feel like risking.
>
>Bottom line: the banking system, as we currently know it,
is in serious danger of collapsing.
>
>The other component of the "iron triangle" of critical
infrastructure services is telecommunications.  Each of the
"big three" of ATT, MCI, and Sprint is dealing with a Y2K
portfolio of 300-400 million lines of code; there are
interesting rumblings from all three that indicate all is not
rosy with their Y2K efforts.  Even if they make it, there are
now hundreds of small, independent, deregulated carriers
that can wreak havoc on the overall telecommunications
"grid".  An example of this occurred two days ago with a
problem caused by a random firm called Illuminet; see the
attached news release below.  Even assuming we get dial
tone on 1/1/2000 in the U.S. and England, you can
reasonably expect that several third-world countries are
going to be cut off from telecommunications for several
weeks or months because of Y2K problems.
>
>Meanwhile, within the typical corporate environment,
consider yet another statistic: 90% of the PBX switchboards
installed before 1996 are NON-compliant.  Small-medium
enterprises (SME's) are generally oblivious to this problem,
and are not at all interested in upgrading their equipment.
>
>If you look at this on a global basis (as I'm currently
doing with one of my consulting clients, who has 100+
MAJOR offices on 7 continents), the problem is horrific.
>
>Then there's the government.  The smart-__s character
who critiqued my email to your list-serve member seemed
amused by my oblique reference to Clinton's executive
order; I suspect he had never heard of it before, which isn't
surprising considering how little media attention it got.  For
what it's worth, the Executive Order was quietly published
on Feb 4th and began with the words "Minimizing the Y2K
problem will require a major technological and managerial
effort, and it is critical that the United States Government
do its part in addressing this challenge."  But it turns out
that the "Y2K Conversion Council" that Clinton has created
with the Executive Order is just another bureaucratic
committee, and won't have much impact on the outcome. 
Your homestead group may not care about such things,
but it's worth noting that 16 of the 26 major federal
agencies are predicting that they'll finish their Y2K testing in
Nov or Dec 1999; that's enough to make any veteran
software professional break out in howls of laughter.
Congressman Stephen Horn (R-CA, and a former university
president) predicts that 14 of the 26 agencies won't finish
even their mission-critical systems on time.  IRS appears to
be doomed; perhaps that's why the CIO, Arthur Gross,
resigned last month.  FAA has gotten lots of press recently
about their Y2K problems (and the top Y2K person in that
agency has resigned, too) -- but that's the GOOD news
about the Dept of Transportation, which is currently
estimated to finish its Y2K work in 2019; the bad news is
that 95% of the exports from this country go by sea, and
the maritime industry only held its first Y2K conference this
week (in NYC; I attended it), and doesn't have a clue about
Y2K.  HHS (Health & Human Services) has basically shot
itself in the foot by firing its outsourcing-contractors and
bringing its partially completed software projects inhouse
without Y2K compliance; as a result, Medicare and
Medicaid are seriously threatened.
>
>Etc, etc, etc.  I can't claim that my crystal ball is perfect,
but I will tell you that my own personal Y2K plans include a
very simple assumption: the government of the U.S., as we
currently know it, will fall on 1/1/2000.  Period.
>
>I just noticed your sig file says you're from Georgia. 
Well, here's what's going on in GA:  about a month ago, the
Governor woke up and announced that the state would
have to spend approx $130 million to "combat" the Y2K
bug, most of which would be spent to hire approx 400
programmers.  By itself, a proposal from the governor
doesn't mean diddly-squat, but it's amazing to see that the
GA legislature actually approved the funding proposal
within a matter of weeks; by contrast, states like Texas
(where my daughter recently addressed the Appropriations
committee of the state legislature on the global economic
impact of Y2K) cannot easily do so, because they operate
on a constitutionally-mandated balanced budget, which
doesn't allow deficit spending.  Anyway, GA apparently has
approval to spend $130 million, which means that it has
approval to hire 400 programmers.  But the governor
doesn't want to hire them himself -- the appropriation has
to trickle down two or three levels to the various
departments that will actually decide how much they need,
and how many programmers they need. How long will that
take? Three months?  Six months?  Whenever it happens,
the state IT departments will go out into the marketplace to
try to hire 400 people at civil-service salaries.  In today's
marketplace, how many do you think they'll be able to hire?
 How about: ZERO.  The "great sucking sound" that Ross
Perot warned of in his last Presidential campaign turns out
to be the sound of programmers being sucked out of the
public-sector government agencies, into the private sector,
where competitive salaries can be paid, and salaries are
rising at the rate of 2-5% per month.  And even if they could
hire 400 programmers 3-6 months from now, it's too late.
IT'S TOO LATE!  Of course, maybe God will smile on
Georgia, and maybe the critical state agencies in your state
will get their Y2K work done in time; meanwhile, there are
49 other states, several of whom (ND, MT, WY, AK and
several others) appear not to have even begun doing any
Y2K work.The chances that even a reasonable majority of
them will finish is pretty small, in my humble opinion.  And
then there are the counties, and the cities.... I could go on
at great length, because there's a lot more detail that we
Y2K "warriors" know about and are dealing with, but I think
you see the point: those of us who are living with the
problem on a day-to-day basis are terrified.  You indicated
that some of your listserv members have 20 years of
computing experience.  Wow.  Big deal.  I've got 34 years
of experience in the field, and I've got a public reputation
that (if nothing else) suggests that I probably should not be
dismissed as an alarmist quack; see my web site at
http://www.yourdon.com for more details. Yes, I've written
a Y2K book which will sell more copies if Y2K is a problem
-- but I've also written 24 other software-engineering
computer books, starting in 1967, that are doing quite well,
and generating much  higher royalties than a mass-market,
low-priced, heavily-discounted Y2K book. I could make at
least as much money, if not more money, during the next
two years by focusing my efforts on OO technology, Java,
and the Internet; but in my opinion, the Y2K problem will
make any discussion of OO and the Internet roughly akin
to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Frankly, I couldn't
care less whether your computer veterans agree or
disagree with my views on Y2K; my daughter and I wrote
our "Time Bomb 2000" book to articulate personal Y2K
contingency plans for our family, our friends, and other
personal acquaintances.  If Y2K does turn out to be as bad
as I think it will be, nobody is going to care abut the
opinions of software professionals on 1/1/2000 (other than
possibly lynching them for having created the problem in
the first place!); instead, everyone is going to be
concentrating on how to get food, shelter, clothing, and the
basic necessities of life.  Y2K threatens all of this, except in
the backwards economies that have never depended on
automation or socio-economic interactions with other
automated societies.   Rural China will probably be okay;
but in my humble opinion, New York, Chicago, Atlanta and
a dozen other cities are going to resemble Beirut in
January 2000.  That's why I've moved out of NYC to rural
New Mexico a couple months ago.
>
>You're welcome to post these remarks on your listserv if
you think it would serve some constructive purpose; I'll
leave that up to you.   But in general, I assume that your
listserv group has come to the conclusion that Y2K is not a
problem, and that you'd rather not hear any opinions of the
sort that I've expressed above.  That's fine with me; as
Spock says on Star Trek: "live long and prosper."  I wish
you well, and hope that we'll all be able to compare notes
about the Y2K situation in a calm rational fashion on
1/2/2000.
>
>But in the meantime, I've got work to do.  There are only
674 days left.
>
> Sincerely, Ed Yourdon
> --
> Are you aware of the Year 2000 problem?  We all need to
be.
>  ************************
> http://pw2.netcom.com/~helliott/00.htm
> http://www.year2000.com
> http://www.yourdon.com
> http://www.garynorth.com
>
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/roleigh_martin/