'Westergaard Year 2000 Y2K Tip of the Week #56
Federal Government is Botching Year 2000 Efforts
By Jim Lord
John Koskinen, the federal government's Y2K Czar, is a very funny guy.
At the most recent monthly meeting of the Washington DC Year 2000 (WDCY2K)
Group, he kept a record crowd of five hundred rolling in the aisles for almost
two hours. The General Accounting Office (GAO) was even kind enough to provide
a dour, but well-meaning straight man in the person of Joel Willemmsen, author
of many of the reports that have been severely critical of the federal
government's Y2K efforts.
(Willemssen was little more than and undernourished shill)
With the consummate skill of a practiced corporate executive and top-level
bureaucrat, Mr. Koskinen pulled off a remarkable feat. His disarming grin and
a string of self-deprecating one-liners kept a highly skeptical crowd of
Washington technology insiders at bay just long enough to escape any really
tough questions.
( Basically all he did, was crack jokes. No kidding. I half expected him to
pull out his wallet and show pictures of his last fishing trip and grand
children.)
His prepared remarks, however, were just a disappointing recap of the latest
OMB Y2K status report to Congress. This "rubber chicken" fare shed no light on
the single question that was on every mind in the room, "OK Mr. Czar, we hear
the PR but - how's the government REALLY doing on Y2K?"
(This is the crux of the matter. We wanted to hear HOW they were doing. We gat
Zippo. Zilch. Nada. At one point his great epiphany was that the agencies
rrealized that they had to set priorities.)
Sifting through Koskinen's punch lines for the answer to that question is
difficult but it's worth the effort. At one point, for example, he summarized
the whole federal Y2K effort with this statement,
"By and large, the bulk of the mission critical systems will be either
repaired or there will be manual workarounds in place."
Now, there's a real confidence builder. "By and large?" What the dickens does
that mean - fifty one percent? And "the bulk of?" What's that all about? You
could put six guys in a rowboat with slingshots and, "By and large, you'd have
the bulk of a manual workaround for the US Navy.
That was one of just a few revealing statements made during the evening. It
certainly marks a dramatic change from last February when the Czar was
confidently claiming that ALL of the government's essential computing systems
would be working come January 2000.
(Well, this is what I have been saying from the start, but nobody wanted to
hear it because it was bad news. If I 'was not' convinced of a government
collapse before last week's meeting, I am unequivocably convinced now.)
Although the Y2K Czar's performance was high in entertainment value, I found
it void of any real content. Like cotton candy, it was fun but there was
nothing there at the end. I actually had a question for Mr. Koskinen but,
with five hundred other hands in the air, didn't get recognized by the
group's moderator.
(BKS criticized me for not getting a crack at Koskinen. I was not the only
one. ALL the questions were completely lame except for the one from Drew
Parkhill of CBN News. Koskinen did not answer his question and stumbled badly
over the numbers.)
The question was this:
Eighty six percent of all large technology projects are completed late or not
at all.
At one time, each of these projects was projected to finish on schedule.
Y2K is the largest and most complex technology project in history.
It has an inflexible deadline.
OMB claims the government will finish on schedule.
Most experienced Y2K experts find the government's projections ludicrous.
My question - Why should we believe the federal government is about to pull
off the greatest technology miracle in history?
I invite a response from Mr. Koskinen and promise to post it at this site.
While we wait, I think the actual but unspoken message revealed during Mr.
Koskinen's appearance at WDCY2K is that the federal government is failing
miserably in its management of the nation's Y2K Crisis. My reasons are these:
Nobody owns the problem. Bureaucracies aren't designed to solve new problems
or problems that cross over jurisdictional boundaries. Y2K does both and
more. "There's no Y2K manual on the bookshelf, so this thing can't be mine."
Everyone is fretting about his or her own mission-critical systems but nobody
in the government is claiming ownership of the nation's "citizen- critical"
systems.
Shooting at the wrong target. Most (incidentally, that's more than either "by
and large," or "the bulk of") of the data being tracked, analyzed and reported
on, concerns legacy systems. The most serious threat lies in embedded systems.
No corporate buy-in. This, of course, has been the critical deficiency from
the beginning. White House, Congress, House, Senate, Republican, Democrat -
there's not a shred of leadership in sight and none is expected regardless of
the outcome of the current scandal. The worst technical problem in history is
coming at us like a freight train and the national leadership is frozen in
some bizarre, locker room joke.
Politics as usual. The guy in charge has no funding, no staff, and no power.
He spends a lot of his time defending a report he doesn't own. A commission
with dozens of members but no funding, no staff, and no power forms
THIRTY-FIVE working groups. When the heads of the seven most
"millennially-challenged" agencies were called in recently for a tongue
lashing, it was the Vice President who delivered the sermon. He whose
funding, staff and power are less even than a bucket of warm spit. These
people aren't managing Y2K - they're managing the appearance and the politics
of Y2K.
Here's another statement made by Mr. Koskinen the other night that wraps all
these failings up into one tight, scary, little bundle. When asked how the
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was preparing for Y2K, the amusing
czar (who reports directly to the President of the United States, by the way)
replied,
"Well, we've been trying to get them to focus on this problem."
The giants of laughter from Shakespeare to Eddie Murphy know that human
misfortune is the foundation of all great comedy. The federal government's
management of the nation's Year 2000 Computing Crisis is a joke - and that's a
genuine tragedy.
*********
My unhappy Tip of the Week is to emphasize once more that you reduce your
dependency on the federal government where possible. Secondly, develop
contingency plans for the possible disruption or termination of any government
service or program upon which you depend. You, your family, your church and
your community may very well have to pick up the slack.
Good Luck!
Jim Lord
===============================
Like I said, the WDCY2k meeting was a horrible sham. If they had ANY kind of
handle on it at all, they would have had SOMETHING to talk about. Anything at
all. But he could say absolutely nothing.
It is over folks. Completely over, no ifs,ands or buts. I have no problem at
all saying that it is 100% get the heck out of Dodge time. Yes, 'run for the
hills' time. If someone wants to disparage that, it is just peachy keen with
me. You have no time left to pussy-foot around.
It is coming down and it is coming down hard.
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