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Technology Stocks : 2000: Y2K Civilized Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: flatsville who wrote (513)	9/3/1999 3:19:00 AM
From: Cheeky Kid	Respond to of 662

bibim.com JOHANNESBURG September 1 1999

To: flatsville who wrote (513)	9/3/1999 10:11:00 AM
From: flatsville	Respond to of 662

it-director.com Fair Use/etc... Y2K Predictions Revisited By Ian Hugo, Action 2000 Wednesday, 1st September 1999 In January this year I wrote a paper entitled "Predicting Year 2000 Disruption". It is available on this website. The paper sought to dispel the myth that everything happens (or doesn't) on the 1st of January 2000 and explained a line of reasoning that would enable failure scenarios to be planned. Principal points in the paper are as follows: 1 Whatever level of disruption will occur should start to become evident as from the middle of this year and will extend to the end of 2000: an extended failure curve, not some form of sudden death. 2 A distinction has to be made between date-logic errors occurring and disruption. Many date-logic failures will not cause externally noticeable disruption. Failures most likely to be individually disruptive are failure to replace (for compliance reasons) a system/application on schedule and failure to detect data corruption quickly. 3 Most individual potential failures, even disruptive ones, won't cause long-term disruption and could even be covered up internally. Longer-term disruption will be caused when disruptive failures overlap in time: company fatalities will be caused only by multiple "hits". 4 Multiple hits are most likely to occur in large organisations that were late in starting Y2K programmes, as that causes scheduled end-dates for multiple individually large projects to fall at around the same time, provoking potential "congestion". Spot on cue, the Passport Agency finally had to own up to a 0.75 million backlog in applications for passports in June. This was due to two impacts, although only one was Y2K related. The first was cut-in of legislation passed the previous year requiring 16-year olds to have their own passports. The second was failure to implement a new passport issuing system (PASS) successfully on schedule by Siemens Business Systems (contracted to do so), to replace the previous and non-compliant PIMIS system. The two simultaneous impacts have caused long-term disruption, which still continues despite various (unplanned) contingency measures. The contingency aspect is also instructive. A general precept of contingency planning is to ensure clear and consistent communication. In this case, all the bodies involved managed to contradict one another publicly: (a) Siemens Business Systems denied any failure to implement the PASS system (b) the Home Office Minister responsible for the Passport Agency stated on TV that the disruption was the result of the two impacts mentioned above but denied any Y2K connection (c) the Passport Agency stated in its quarterly return to Cabinet Office that PIMIS was being replaced by PASS because of Y2K non-compliance of the former. The result was an article in the Daily Telegraph (June 8th) asking who was supposed to be in charge and know what was going on. That, too, was unfortunately only too predictable. Since then, there have been individual and disruptive Y2K-related failures reported in the media at: London Electricity Coastguard & Maritime Agency Inland Revenue John Radcliffe Hospital National Air Traffic Control Systems DSS All of these disruptions resulted from failure to replace non-compliant systems successfully. I also know of three local public sector bodies which, because of Y2K-related failures, are currently processing manually applications that were previously automated. In one case, this has been the situation to some extent for over a year now. Thus far, they have avoided press attention. All this evidence supports my paper and, I believe, is enough to suggest that the predictions in it may be materially correct. In most cases, individual failures other than in public bodies and of customer-interfacing systems will probably go unreported. However, the early and necessary basis for a "death by attrition" scenario (described in the paper) is clearly already in place in a number of organisations. If, as predicted in my paper, the number of individually disruptive failures increases later this year, then the chances of multiple overlapping failures occurring in the same organisation must increase and we will see more examples similar to that of the Passport Agency. The possibility of a third, and potentially fatal, hit then increases also. Paradoxically, this tends to negate the original reason for my paper: to dispel the myth that we should focus on 1st January 2000 as potential "Disruption Day". It may be that we shall indeed see major disruption then, but because of a build-up of failures that have mostly occurred much earlier. However, the Passport Agency has already "proved" one of my major conclusions: that contingency plans needed to be in place by the middle, not the end, of this year.

To: flatsville who wrote (513)	9/3/1999 11:43:00 AM
From: flatsville	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 662

I thought I'd check Feilder's current status to see if he grows more pessimistic in Sept. as a result of his recent tour of Japan. russkelly.com >>>Karl Feilder. Ranking of problem: July 1998- 5.0. August 1998: 6.0. October 1998- 6.0. December 1998- 6.0. January 1999- 5.0. February 1999- 6.0. March 1999- 7.0. April 1999- 7.0. May 1999- 7.5. June 1999- 8.0. July 1999- 8.0. August 1999- 8.0. CEO of Greenwich Mean Time, international expert on the Y2K PC problem and its resolution. PC Program Coordinator of the UK government's Year 2000 taskforce, Action 2000. He also has been appointed PC Program Advisor for the Australian government's Year 2000 taskforce, and Honorary Advisor to the South African Government. (http://www.feilder.com) [Click here for statement from Karl]<<< Looks like we'll see a 9 before long. (As a side note: The fact that Henry Ahlgrim finds Feilder's assessment of the Japanese PC situation scary concerns me. Ahlgrim has displayed a rather "polly" view of the situation in Japan to date. That may be changing.)