Y2K

By Jim Seymour July 21, 1999 I wrote here about Y2I promised a midyear update on how things are going. The short answer Things look generally better than they did then, and its becoming pretty clear that excepting the possibility of a Y2K-induced recession forecasts of large-scale, long-lasting, nationwide problems can be discounted.This doesnt mean that there wont be scattered problems that they wont affect you, your company, and your family or that some of those problems wont be serious.

Some almost certainly will be. But on the whole, consciousness about Y2K has been raised to a level sufficient to avoid most problems and to deal effectively with many of the remaining ones. Until now, Ive dealt here mainly with PC issues, such as BIOS and RTC real-time clock problems in PC hardware and software compliance. This is, after all, PC Magazine, so our focus is determinedly PC-centric.Most of the really pernicious computer-related Y2K problems, however, have been in older, larger systems, all the way back to COBOL code written 20 and 30 years ago for now-aging mainframes. And its time, I think, to shift from a focus on our computers and software to the larger societal issues with Y2K. It doesnt much matter whether your PC is working properly if you cant get to work because of fouled-up train switches, out-of-order traffic lights, shut-down public transit systems, no electric or phone service, or inoperable elevators.

It will matter a very great deal whether you and your family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers have potable water, food, or heat on that key turn-of-the-millennium, winter weekend and maybe, if youre unlucky enough to live in an area with persistent problems, for a while after that. First, though, a review of where we stand now on PCs and Y2K. In the PC world, weve been pretty fortunate PCs shipping for the past year have had Y2K-compliant hardware.

Beyond that, most PCs built since the mid-nineties are pretty easy to fix by replacing a BIOS chip, or sometimes simply by running a software patch.

You can find an excellent free PC BIOS test-and-maybe-fix utility, drawn from Symantecs top-grade software package Norton 2000, at www.symantec.comsabun2000fsretail.html. Older PCs remain problematic, but frankly, given the advances in PCs since 1994 or 1995, you shouldnt be running them for any critical work anyway. Its time to upgrade, for lots of good reasons beyond Y2K worries. In PC networking, there are a fair number of noncompliant devices out there.

The good news is that most networking products either dont know or dont care about the date, or are running on a safe calendar that begins in the 1970s. But even some very recent networking devices dont properly handle the leap-year date of February 29, 2000, which somehow got overlooked dont ask. Check with your network-hardware vendor.Some have fixes many offer trade-in deals usually lowballed, though for fairly recent noncompliant products.

In PC software, its a mixed bag. Even products as recent as Microsofts nearly ubiquitous Windows 95 and Office 97 have Y2K issues, though they may not affect you. You can find patches for many of those problems at www.microsoft.com. Windows 98 and the new Office 2000 suite and its components are said by Microsoft to be Y2K-problem-free. For any PC software package you rely on, check with the vendor.

PC software developers have, to be sure, put out some pretty vague and unreliable statements over the past year or so about their Y2K problems. But in the past six months, theres been a great improvement in the quantity, accuracy, and usefulness of vendor-provided Y2K-compatibility information. Check the Web sites of your key softwares publishers.For more structured information, and especially for testing find out what your vendors say, but dont trust them without confirming their claims take a look at the Norton 2000 product mentioned above.

In both an inexpensive personal version 40 street and a not-too- expensive corporate version about 25 per seat, Norton 2000 is the best general- purpose Y2K testing package Ive seen. Much more specialized and more expensive programs are available for corporate IT managers as well. Actually, I dont worry so much about Y2K compatibility with recent software. I worry about you and me. No matter how much software vendors wring out their products, shedding bad code, most of the problems well see will arise from what weve done with those packages.

If youve routinely used two-digit year dates in your spreadsheets date-calculation formulas and functions, for example, you may be in trouble.Most recent and all current spreadsheet software I know will automatically expand year dates for calculations if youve chosen to display them with only two digits but only if youve actually entered them as four-digit years. Think about it How else could they work Checking your own work can be daunting.

How many spreadsheets have you built, and how many do you still use How many of those have you passed on to others And how many have been passed on even farther in your company, probably to people you have no idea use them What about databases youve constructed, or more likely, into which youve entered date data How will you find that data and correct it as necessary Waiting until problems arise is not a very smart option.

Do you really want to go through every worksheet, cell by cell, and every database record, looking for bad data Ive spoken to well over a hundred audiences around the country about Y2K issues over the past couple of years. Ive been astonished to find how few people in those audiences had considered that they might be part of the Y2K problem, through sloppy habits in building and using PC spreadsheet and database programs. And True Confessions time Im as guilty as they are. Until we devoted most of a week to running down specific date entries in the data files in general use in my office, we had some problems.

Umm make that a lot of problems. Almost all of them caused by me, with my sloppy, lazy, two-digit year date data-entry habits. And Im supposed to know about this stuff.Next time, Ill set the computer-specific items aside and focus on those larger societal issues I mentioned.

This is important stuff stay tuned. By Jim Seymour August 5, 1999 As promised last time, lets look at the noncomputer side of Y2K the steps you should consider taking to prepare for any possible interruptions or dislocations a few months from now. Wait much longer and youll be limiting your options. Next issue, Ill dive back into hardware and software, with some recommendations on great new products Ive been working with at the top and bottom of the price scale.In general, in first-world countries and especially in the U.S. and Canada, the Y2K situation is looking better than most of us whove been following this expected. Both government agencies and private and public companies have been focusing on working the kinks out of date-sensitive computer systems, to avoid major crises on January 1, 2000. As Ive said before, I dont expect to see widespread and enduring problems, civil disobedience, or pervasive and continuing shortages and outages.

I believe that in North America, the biggest problems will be temporary electrical outages, plus sporadic shortages of water, some medicines, and possibly food. And while well have millions of little glitches Dear Mr. Seymour We regret to inform you that according to our records, you are now minus-61 years old, and thus no longer eligible for our program.

Have a nice day they wont have much real impact.Do you live in a part of the country that will be affected by these scattered outages and shortages I dont know, and neither do you. About all we can predict now is that because the calendar changes in early winter, problems that do arise will affect those in northern latitudes more than those in the South. No matter where you live, its prudent to think now about steps you can take to prepare yourself and your family for whatever happens in your area, to minimize the effects of Y2K-related problems.

Heres the six-point checklist Ive been recommending to friends 1. Talk to your friends, neighbors, and family members about possible Y2K problems now. The effects of many possible Y2K-related problems can be mitigated by advance planning and cooperation.

You need to know the general level of awareness among those who live near you about any Y2K disruptions ahead, and you, your family, and your neighbors need to be ready to help one another. 2. Talk with your family now about what kinds of Y2K problems might arise and what theyd mean to you. This is important in three ways It raises consciousness, it gives family members the sense of security that comes from having anticipated and discussed possible problems, and it draws out good ideas.

Your kids especially need both the reassurance that things will be okay and a forum for their own ideas many of which you would never think of yourself.My 8-year-old son popped up with the idea of a Y2K Weekend this summer, with no electricity, TV, phones, turning on of the water tap, or cooking. It was a great idea we did it and had a wonderful experience.

We not only got the obvious benefits of learning all the ways we could do without some of the things were used to, if we have to, but we all of us learned a lot about ourselves and about each other. 3. Assess your own situation. Every familys requirements are different.The possible Y2K issues facing a family living on the 37th floor of an Upper East Side New York apartment, in the icy grip of early January, with no electric, sewage, or water service, are very different from those of a family in a four-bedroom ranch-style house in a suburb of Phoenix.

Talk with your local government and utility Y2K-compliance officers about their assessment of their own state of readiness. 4. Stockpile judiciously. If anyone in your family routinely takes maintenance drugs insulin, Prozac, or high-blood-pressure medication, for example stock up for an extra month or two now. Get some bottled water.Get a little packaged food you can eat without much preparation.

But dont go crazy Youre not stocking up for Armageddon. Dont fill your garage and closets with years worth of banana chips and freeze-dried ice cream.You just want to be able to get through any possible temporary problems distribution-system failures and electrical problems that knock out refrigeration and maybe your grocers ability to open for business for a few days. Keep some extra cash around, but dont make yourself a target for a burglary or create huge tax problems for yourself by cashing out of your stock portfolio at years end. 5. Make and organize paper copies of everything important.

If your bank, insurers, medical-care providers, and others temporarily lose access to their account records, you want recent paper copies of those records at hand, both for peace of mind and in case you need them to straighten out computer-failure-induced errors.Let Y2K become your incentive to do what you should have already done Gather and safely file at home not in a potentially inaccessible bank safety-deposit box essential health, financial, citizenship, and education records. 6. Keep reassessing.

Over the next few months, the state of Y2K-readiness will change dramatically. Keep up to date on what your local utilities, public safety agencies, and others say theyre doing and on their reported states of Y2K-compliance. Finally, Im often asked what worries me most about the year 2000. Here are my big four concerns.Interconnectedness. I worry that you and I and our employers, suppliers, and public agencies will all do what we need to get Y2K-ready, but well be blindsided by problems with other entities upon which our systems rely. Utilities.

I worry a lot about Americas electric utilities, on both the power-generation and power-distribution sides.If theres no juice, theres no water, sewage pumping, waste-water treatment, and so on. We have a huge patchwork of electric utilities, and some, especially the smaller ones, are certainly going to have severe problems.

Lawyers.Y2K is going to be the Lawyers Full-Employment Act. Well lose a trillion dollars or more out of our GNP to unproductive lawsuits and legal fees. And Washington doesnt seem interested in ameliorating this. You and me. Finally, I worry about dangerous, eccentric, selfish, and unnecessary acts by people like you and me. A run on Americas banks, large-scale hoarding and worse, profiteering by reselling from those hoards, and the spreading of false information could create large-scale Y2K problems where none would otherwise exist.

Please Dont play that game. Most of our readers seem unconcerned with Y2K, as well as with programs that might help fix their machines. By Edward Mendelson Sept 16, 1999 You may wake up sweating with panic about the Y2K bug, but your personal computer probably wont notice the problem.If your machine is up-to-date enough to connect to the Internet and read this story, it will probably slip into the new millennium without difficulty.

For personal computer users, virtually the only potential Y2K problems are hidden in your spreadsheets and databases, where two-digit numbers can cause errors in formulas or sorting routines. But the few visitors who commented on Symantecs Norton 2000 didnt seem particularly worried. Norton 2000 based on Viasofts OnMark 2000 Assess includes two kinds of tests.The first is a set of Y2K-system-readiness tests of the same basic kind that are available for no charge from many Web sites.

The other is a set of more advanced tests that scan spreadsheets, databases, and Visual Basic source code embedded in Microsoft Excel and Access files to find ambiguous two-digit dates and codes that allow the entry of ambiguous dates. Some of our discussion participants observed correctly that the first kind of test is hardly worth using.Almost every recent PC will pass these system tests, and the few that dont pass can be fixed easily with a memory-resident program that can be installed from the Norton 2000 disk. Only one reader reported using the second type of test, and reported that the file scanner detected problems in files that in fact have no Y2K problems, then gave no indication of what might be done about the problems it reported.

As this reader noted, some of Norton 2000s reports can be confusing.The program describes some potential problems in thorough detail for example, it warns when a date is near the cusp of a century, and might be interpreted differently after a software upgrade.

Other reports merely say Schema contains field definition with internal format date type, but give no indication of where to find the potential problem in the file or how to fix it. An automated Fix Assistant makes short work of correcting problems in Excel files but not in any other files.None of our participants commented on Norton 2000s application scanner, which compares the programs on your disk with an internal database of programs with potential Y2K problems.

Applications are flagged with the seriousness of the problem, and, in many cases, a Web address where you can find a fix. However, if Norton 2000 finds programs on your disk that it cant recognize, it flags them as potential problems even if they are merely arcade games or childrens word games. Our visitors seem mostly unconcerned with the Y2K bug. Heres hoping theyre right.Continuity planning and the year 2000 The complex and widespread problems that will arise from the difficulties computers and computer related systems have in dealing with the year 2000 represent a huge challenge to business managers.

The key issues in 1999 are no longer technical today the focus must be on business continuity and risk management. Getting these right will not only avoid short-term difficulties it could be major contribution to business success in the next century.Getting this right will not be easy. Above all, there is so little time left to acquire a thorough grasp of the complex issues involved and to put the new understanding into practice.

The reality may be that anyone who has not made a real start on this may already be too late. That s bad enough. But there s worse news although year 2000 risk is quite clearly a business continuity matter, it is so different from all other business continuity concerns that it might almost be a new subject.To put it very simply, normal continuity planning is typically concerned with preparing for a well-defined event on a local scale that may happen at an unknown future date. In contrast, 2000 planning is concerned with a hopelessly ill-defined range of events that will almost certainly happen on a global basis during an essentially well defined timeframe.

To come fully to terms with just that may be a headache. But it s likely to be made worse by the knowledge that failure would mean missing a massively important opportunity.This problem arguably represents a defining opportunity one that will distinguish the businesses that succeed at the beginning of the next century from those that do not. So what can the business manager do now to make a real contribution First, it is essential to learn as much as practicable about the year 2000 problem.

There is a lot of information about much of it useless.Probably a good start is the Taskforce 2000 website www.taskforce2000.co.uk. Let s assume you ve done that or already have a pretty good grasp of the subject. Next you have to come to terms with how all this relates to continuity planning.

For example, you have to understand the immense difference between normal planning and 2000 planning as touched on above. Then you must work with your colleagues, particularly the board, to establish what are the contingencies that could damage the business. The trouble is that this is essentially impossible. Quite simply, no one knows what is going to happen.So you are going to have to guess.

But it must be an informed guess based on a thorough understanding of the problem itself and of the details of your business. Do you really understand both the global and local factors that are essential to the running of the business If not, involve someone who does. Then you can start to determine the risk to list the matters that, if affected by the problem, could damage your business. These will inevitably differ from one business to another.But some factors may apply to all you could be hit by simultaneous and wholly different manifestations of the problem, you may not be able to rely on supplier or customer resilience, there may be infrastructure failures, your own business systems may fail, you may run into financial difficulties, your staff may decide they have other priorities.

And so on. There may be major catastrophes or only a few irritants. My own view is that the real risk may arise from a whole series of interrelated nuisances. No one knows.So you will have to decide and decide in the specific context of your business.

Then, having made that decision, you will have to make a plan or probably a series of plans to deal with the emerging pattern. A few pointers to success Stay continually in touch with what is going on regarding the year 2000 problem both nationally and internationally. Be ready to revise your strategy in the light of what you learn. Focus on threats over which you have some control.Communicate what you are doing widely both inside and outside your organisation.

For example, it may be sensible to include suppliers and customers. Remember that a reduction in the quality of the services you depend on may be more likely than total failure although total failures could happen. Be flexible and expect the unexpected. The businesses that get this right will outperform those that do not. If you can make a major contribution, it will be immensely valuable. But it will be extraordinarily difficult.Good luck. Robin Guenier Executive Director, Taskforce 2000 January 1999 1.