I
guess I'm a natural born skeptic. When people predict that there is an impending crisis of
monumental consequence, I want to see the evidence. I don't want to see hand waving. I
don't want to hear speculation. I want careful reasoning from informed sources based on
concrete facts.
I've asked respected colleagues to provide me with hard data on the Year 2000 (Y2K)
problem and I've searched for it myself. I've concluded that finding reliable information
on Y2K is like finding a needle in a haystack. As the problem gains more and more public
attention, as the money allocated to solving it gets greater and greater, and as it draws
attention at higher and higher levels of organizations, whatever information once existed
has turned to mush. What is now available in abundance is wild speculation and fear
mongering from government reports and self-serving consultants. The old saw "those
who know won't say and those who say don't know" seems to be quite appropriate in the
current milieu.
Just how bad is the Y2K problem? I have no doubt that it is a serious
problem that requires considerable resources to rehabilitate both major and minor software
systems. But will it cause stoppages of government? Will it cause a world-wide recession?
Will it cause failures of power grids? Will it cause food shortages? Will it create
threats to our national security? I don't know and I don't feel enlightened by the current
reports.
But those are the predictions. And if those predictions are believed by
a sufficient number of people, then they will be self-fulfilling. When people believe
rumors of a toilet paper shortage, they will hoard toilet paper and cause the shortage. If
people believe there will be a collapse of the financial systems, they will take their
money out of the banks and stock markets. Alan Greenspan notes that loss of confidence in
the financial systems (such as recently occurred in Asia) can be traced as the cause of
most, if not all, recessions. If the loss of confidence leads to panic, then worldwide
recession, or even depression, can be the result.
So here are some of the reasons that I am so skeptical about the quality of the
information.
The Ethereal Nature of Software
All public comment about Y2K is tainted by the ethereal nature of software. You can't
see it. You can't weigh it. You can't put a property tag on it. People are generally
mystified by it. By the time the information filters up to the pundits, the
self-proclaimed experts, the economists, the politicians, and yes, even the heads of
state, it gets badly mangled. We hear that the cost to fix the problem is proportional to
the number of computers. We hear that when the DJIA rolls over to 10,000 some computers
will report it as 1,000. We hear that systems will "fail" when they display 2000
as "00".
The Popularization of Y2K
It's nearly impossible to sort the wheat from the chaff. There are dozens of articles
about Y2K appearing daily. There are websites and committees. There are reports from
research and development centers and watchdog agencies. There are Y2K tsars at every
level. There are pundits and prognosticators. More recently, the story has been regularly
in the headlines of the newspapers and on the national TV news and the TV newsmagazines.
And most recently, the focus has been on hearing from the survivalists. We hear reports
from people with plans to withdraw all their money to avert the financial crisis and from
people with their own backyard natural gas wells. Ed Yourdon reported on the national news
that he has moved his family out of the city into the country to mitigate the effects of
the impending crisis.
The Assumptions, Speculation, and Multiplication
My skeptical juices started flowing in the mid-1990's when Gartner Group started
predicting that the Y2K problem would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to fix. They
arrive at these numbers largely by postulating a cost per line of code and then
speculating, assuming, and multiplying. For example, the Gartner Group estimates "A
medium size shop with approximately 8000 programs, each program averages 1500 LOC, and a
data reference to LOC ratio of 1:50 will cost in the range of $450/program to $600/program
or $3.6-$4.8 million for the entire initiative". Peter De Jager opines that
"Japan will melt" based on comparisons of how much Japanese banks are spending
on Y2K versus American banks.
This may be so, but what is he assuming about the way Y2K expenditures are reported?
What is he assuming about the state automation and the state of the software in the first
place? What is he assuming about the technology and manpower available to remediate the
problem? What is he assuming about what has been learned by the early fixers? What is he
assuming about labor rates and exchange rates? We just don't know if the conclusions flow
logically from his set of assumptions.
The People and the Money
We are taught to weigh carefully the opinion of anyone who has a financial stake in
that opinion. Since there is considerable money to be spent on the Y2K problem, it is just
natural to "follow the money." Well-known personalities such as Peter De Jager,
Ed Yourdon, and Ed Yardeni each have their own websites which prominently display their
resumes, their speaking engagements, their seminars, and so on. Could they capitalize
equally well on their message if they stated that Y2K was well under control? How many
companies are exploiting the Y2K as their major business focus? There are a list of
approximately 150 "Year 2000 Companies" on the De Jager website. All of these
companies are trying to turn a profit on their Y2K goods and services. They all have keen
incentives to convince individual companies and the world in general that Y2K is a serious
problems worthy of their attention.
The Public Fascination with Disaster
The current public fascination with Armageddon makes "news stories" more
saleable if they have a slant that caters to disaster. Stories about UFO's sell well.
Stories debunking UFOs don't sell nearly as well. Notice how many recent films deal with
catastrophic calamity. Titanic, Deep Impact, and Armageddon are
only the latest of the genre that has dealt with earthquakes, tornadoes, and contagious
diseases. Very few people remember the depression of the 1930's, and El Nino and the
floods and hurricanes seem too tame for today's public. To make Y2K sell in Peoria, it is
consistent with public demand to make society's infrastructure fail.
The CIA has recently fueled the apocalypse scenario by briefing its employees on
preparing themselves individually for potential fallout from the Y2K problems. They are
being advised to pay their bills early in December 1999 to avoid possible processing
problems, to keep cash on hand in case automatic teller machines fail and to lay in extra
blankets in case of a blackout on a cold New Year's Eve night. Is this a responsible
position for a public agency to take?
The Nerds Can't Be Heard
Unfortunately, the people who can elucidate the real story are not generally disposed
or empowered to tell their story. (SIGPC being the exception --- Ed.) The reason that
there are few case studies that give hard cold facts is that the people who know are
generally quiet introspective types. They have little incentives to get the word out. They
are valued for their ability to solve problems, not for their abilities to tell people how
they solved them. Their employers generally want them to continue solving the problems and
don't want them to tell how the problems are solved. Companies have a disincentive to tell
how they solved their Y2K problems since it gives up a competitive advantage.
The Terminology Is Poorly Defined and Loosely Used
There is a lack of general agreement on critical definitions of phrases such as
"mission critical" and "Y2K compliant" and "failure". It is
generally agreed that "mission critical" systems ought to be fixed and that
"non-mission critical" systems can wait. But this begs the question of for whom
is the mission critical? All missions are critical to those who are responsible for them.
Most would agree that getting ones paycheck or social security payment is "mission
critical". But what about having your copier work or your elevator work?
As for "Y2K compliant", does that mean that all Y2K issues have been
addressed, or only that the important issues have been addressed? Given that Y2K
compliance follows the 80/20 rule, is it necessary to be 100% compliant, or is 80%
compliant good enough for certain systems? How important is it for systems that use, but
do not do computation on dates, to be "Y2K compliant"? The problem is that in
collecting and aggregating data, the definitions, if they exist at all, can be interpreted
differently by different organizations, leading to apples/oranges situations.
Finally, we are barraged with "failures" related to Y2K. But we are often
given no further information. Is the failure localized or is it a system failure? If it is
a system failure, is there an obvious workaround? Is the failure just a user interface
failure, or does it have broader implications? One example reported in Australian
Financial Review: "Royal Sutherland Hospital in New South Wales has identified two
processors, a laser camera and an ultrasound machine which will be rendered inoperable
come 2000. The value of the equipment is estimated at more than $550,000 and it must be
replaced."
The Snippets and Tidbits Don't Provide Information
Snippet: "When Chrysler Chairman Robert Eaton reported on a test done at their
Sterling Heights Assembly Plant in 1997, he said ‘Nobody could get out of the plant.
The security system absolutely shut down and wouldn't let anybody in or out. And you
obviously couldn't have paid people, because the time-clock systems didn't work.'"
Tidbit: "This past April 1998, Money Magazine reported that the computer network
that schedules patient appointments at three hospitals and 75 clinics in Pennsylvania shut
down—all because one person punched in an appointment for January 2000."
These snippets and tidbits are interesting. But usually there is no indication about
how hard it is to fix these problems. It could be as simple as a one line fix in a program
on one computer or it could be fixes to multiple systems spanning many computers. The good
news is that people are doing these tests or finding bugs by accident. The unknowns are
what percent of such systems are being tested and how big is the remediation effort?
Some snippets do give useful information. One example: "Corning writes multi-year
contracts for chemicals and other raw materials to smooth out fluctuations in supply and
prices. But last summer, when it came time to start entering contracts expiring in the
year 2000, "The system aborted with a programming error" and took several weeks
to fix, recalls Jim Scott, technology director of Corning's science and technology
unit."
The Filtering Fosters Information Loss
In large organizations, filtering takes place up the chain of command, each level of
management adding their own spin. There is a familiar story about how a software
engineer's warnings about an impending system crisis turn into glowing reports by the time
the information reaches the CEO. Similar spins are occurring with Y2K (both positive and
negative).
The DoD has a large spreadsheet to report on Y2K compliance for thousands of its
systems. It primarily reports on dates of completion for each of 5 stages leading to
compliance. On the one hand, there may be incentives to report that everything is moving
smoothly (to keep upper management and regulators at bay). On the other hand, there may be
incentives to report that things are behind schedule (to get more money to speed up the
process). Using this filtered data to dictate schedules, and then pronouncing that linear
progress is being replaced by geometric progress to meet the deadlines, does not inspire
confidence.
Summary
I can point to a few examples of seemingly good and reliable information about Y2K.
Microsoft's website has clear, comprehensive information about their definitions and their
state of preparedness for Y2K. They clearly state what products are Y2K compliant
according to their definition and where there are remaining Y2K issues (as when their
products interact with other products), they clearly spell them out.
The Pollyannas and Cassandras will fight it out for the next year and a half. The truth
about Y2K is out there, but we will not be sure what it is until 1/1/00 (Surely you mean
1/1/2000? -- Ed.) But I believe that the important question has now rolled over from the
technical milieu to the psychological milieu. No matter whether the technical impact of
Y2K is major or minor, the psychological impact can have major worldwide long-term
consequences.
The more important question now is whether the steady drumbeat of impending disaster
will increase or decrease over time and how the masses will react to it. Will the leaders
of the world be able to reassure the population that disruptions due to Y2K can be
tolerated? If they can, the inconvenience of Y2K may be minor. If they can't, then the
inconvenience will probably be major, and disruptions may be severe whether or not the
technical problems have solved.
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Related information:
Copyright © 1998 S.R.
Tilley & Associates
About Nelson Weiderman
Nelson is a part-time telecommuting Visiting Scientist with the Software Engineering
Institute. When he is not fighting interoperability and incompatibility problems between
versions of Microsoft software on Apples and PC's, Nelson is fighting the interoperability
and incompatibility problems between his navigation software and his sailboat instruments.
He sails and races his J/105 sloop "Kima" out of Wickford, Rhode Island. His
thrill of victory (or agony of defeat) will be posted on the 1998 Block Island Race Week site
during the week of June 22, 1998. |
