I've seen it mentioned on this forum that the fereral government has about 65,000 "NON-mission critical" systems. Can anyone provide the reference where this figure is stated officially. Was it in Joel Willemssen's last (Jan 20, 1999?) GAO report?

-- Roger Altman (RogAltman@AOL.com), February 03, 1999

Answers

Formula for calculating NON mission critical systems.

Non Mission Critical Systems =
Total systems - Mission Critical Systems

where Mission Critical Systems = number of systems remediated by years end.

Note: number of systems remediated by end of time will vary with time.

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), February 03, 1999.

Ooops, almost forgot the Conclusion !!

Number of NON Mission Critical Systems will vary with time.

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), February 03, 1999.

Ray:

You're right. Since the fed gov't. continues to lower number of what they mean by "mission critical", I should have asked for the number of fed gov't. TOTAL computer systems out there. So how many? Do anybody have a reliable reference?

-- Roger Altman (RogAltman@AOL.com), February 03, 1999.

Thanks for bringing this back up. I have done 4-5 hours of surfing and e-mailing various people trying to find this number. I have heard 75000, 73000, and 59000. No good leads as to how this number can be documented.

It's a very important number. If 75-73K is true then our government "promises" to have all of about 9% of their total computer systems Y2K "compliant" by March 31, 1999. Big Deal!

Let's find confirmation of this number.

-- Franklin Journier (ready4y2k@yahoo.com), February 03, 1999.

Franklin:

Thanks very much for the effort. I'm giving a local y2k presentation tonight for between 30 and 40 people and I was planning to use the 65,000 figure until I realized that it isn't documented. As anyone can see, using a well documented figure on the order of 50,000+ can be very persuasive to just about anybody that we are in deep dodo no matter how the government manipulates and "re-defines" the last few thousand as "mission critical".

-- Roger Altman (RogAltman@AOL.com), February 03, 1999.

Franklin & Roger,

I asked that question of Jim Lord (Westerguard site) a speaker at the Seattle Y2K Expo. He said to check out Rep. Steve Horn's report card data and where he gets his numbers from. Sorry gotta run to a meeting in a few or I'd begin searching.

Also you could "e" him.

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), February 03, 1999.

I love the governments method of deciding on system criticality. When Social Security (in 1997) found an additional 35 million lines of code they did not know they had they simply said "it is not mission critical" that way they could still claim they would finish on time. And of course at the end of 1998 they declared they were done (with the first 35 million lines) "we will not have any checks that can not be issued. This statement was true. However, remember that 35 million lines of code that are not mission critical? That is the code used by the States to file New Claims!

-- Steve Watson (swatson1@gte.net), February 03, 1999.

Well, I'm busy on another project and don't have time to look through my files for the overall answer.

But for another article I have DoD in front of me. Their total non-MC systems as of Nov 98 is 7,338. 6,795 are listed as "active," and of those 2,827 are non compliant. The *total* NMC number is down from 25,671 as of Feb 98.

The DoD missioncritical systems are 2,642 as of Nov 98, down from 3143 in Nov 97. 1,592 still had to be done as of Nov 98.

These documents are not online and they have not been made public. I obtained them from sources within DoD.

-- Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com), February 03, 1999.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding those DoD numbers. How can total NMC be "down" from anywhere, let alone drop from 25,671 to 7,338? Is there some category other than "MC" or "NMC" to which they're assigned? One would expect Total_Systems = MC + NMC.

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.com), February 03, 1999.

It all depends on what you call a system. NMC #s dropped since the military decided PCs config'd as tactical systems didn't count towards the total. Remember, there are 1.5 million or so DoD PCs...

-- Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com), February 03, 1999.