I'm just wondering what you all think of this. Last summer, we had Senator Dodd saying that "It's not a question of whether or not there will be disruptions, but how bad they will be" (or words to that effect). In September, the NERC report said Y2K is real, we just don't know what it's effect/impact will be. In January, it was (more or less) "it's manageable." Now we have Energy Secretary Bill Richardson saying no outages, no problems, no shortages, no problems *whatsoever.* And at least some in the utility industry seem to agree.

Am I missing something? I mean, this has been quite a remarkable progression, hasn't it?

Has anyone else noticed this? What do you all think?

-- Anonymous, March 09, 1999

Answers

Drew:

I'm not an "expert" in any of these areas, I'm a worried and concerned citizen. Yes, this has been a very remarkable progression, and not just in utilities. The Federal government has recently performed absolute "wonders" in software remediation. Just ask any director of a major Federal Agency.......

Even the Senate report itself was much more pessimistic than the overviews. Like they were written by different groups or for different audiences.

Truly, it feels managed. I think the general public are not the only ones who are very worried. Goverments and businesses are not rarely good at dealing with the new and unexpected. This is the unknown and unpredictable. Some may be downplaying in hopes it all works out. Some may be trying to downplay to buy time to get a better picture of what "will" happen.

What is the truth? People and groups are uncomfortable with admitting they don't and "can't" know for sure. It can't be reduced to sound bites.

I did a local TV interview a few weeks ago. I ended up being used as a "talking head" on the subject of the "intellectual or philosophical" reasons to prepare for Y2K, interspersed with Militia members and a guy with a basement full of canned goods. Actually, I had expected worse than that.

So, in the end, we have spin. If the people are reassured, there may be no "panic". Everything may work out. From an executive point of view, it is worth a try.

-- Anonymous, March 09, 1999

Compare also the U.S. Postal Service IG's report: http://www.house.gov/reform/gmit/hearings/testimony/990223kc.htm

By no means a comforting document.

-- Anonymous, March 09, 1999

Drew, the same "remarkable progression" has occurred practically across the U.S. infrastructure board, not just in the electric utility industry. Every major industry claims they are on top of the Y2K situation and problems will be few to none. Did we really expect anything different?

Can you truly envision any government agency, or major business (or small business for that matter) coming out and publicly saying something to the effect of, "We're sorry, folks, we became Y2K aware too late, and we aren't going to be able to finish our repairs and testing in time. We expect plenty of disruptions, so make your plans accordingly."

Any government entity doing that would cause the panic they are trying so hard to avoid, and the elected/appointed officials involved would see their "career dissipation" light blinking furiously. I know some people say those officials will be in trouble anyway if things go wrong, but in the bureaucratic mindset, better to wait and see if maybe all the other bureaucrats/politicians have problems too. Then nobody would be singled out in the confusion, except perhaps the President (and as some might think.."what the heck, he can't run for the office again anyway..")

For any business to say anything other than "we'll be fine" is close to unthinkable, for obvious reasons. In our legal system that would be like stretching your neck out in front of a vampire and offering him a drink. The only exception might possibly be if a business impacted the health and safety of others and its owner was one of the most moral, conscientious and honest people known to man. Then he/she *might* consider warning the public to be the better part of valor, but they'd have to take into consideration that they were likely putting themselves and their employees out of a job. When you consider that there are so many unknown factors about the effects of Y2K, even that scenario approaches miracle level. Most of those in doubt will cross their fingers and hope they get lucky on Jan. 1, 2000. (Sen. Bennett's holding our breath scenario.)

I think any expectations of "Official" negative pronouncements, other than "we need to work harder", have always been pipe dreams.

Where does that leave us? We have to depend on our own research, our own ability to deduce probabilities, our own ability to read between the lines of press releases. We have to decide certain things about trust, which will be a completely individual call to make.

For instance, the human being I trust most in this world is my husband. I know what his capabilities are and aren't, what his level of honesty is, the amount of intelligence he has, and what his experience with computer failures is. When he said last year that in his opinion certain businesses and government agencies could not possibly remediate and test everything that needed to be done in the time remaining, I believed him. I saw the warning memos he wrote about the Year 2000 problem -- six years ago. I saw his despondency when they were ignored.

His views are what prompted me to begin my online research. I discovered other respected programmers and systems people who also stated last year that there was not enough time left to accomplish what needed to be accomplished before 2000. If that was true nearly a year ago, it remains true now, regardless of any press releases to the contrary. It takes a certain amount of time and expertise to do the job, period.

However, whom I place my personal trust in, and how I interpret information is unique to me. It does not necessarily apply to anyone else at all. If there is a Y2K problem for every individual, it is this: We have to decide for ourselves where our trust resides, what we believe, who we believe, and what we will or won't do about it -- and whether we can live with the consequences if we're wrong, whatever happens.

-- Anonymous, March 10, 1999

I'll probably sound like a broken record but Y2K is extraordinarily simple, which is why non-techies often understand it first:

The world should have started full-bore on this ten years ago, but five might have been okay if a death-march mentality had prevailed.

Given 1997 thru 1999 start dates on assessment and remediation, it has never been possible to fix anything more than a percentage of only mission-critical systems and to thoroughly test a smaller percentage of those. Ditto but worse for embedded systems.

Consequently, from mid-1998 on, we should have been focusing world-wide on contingency planning and calls for worldwide preparation. Let's drop the excuses and consider the lack of integrity world-wide that punted on that obvious fact, beginning with IT as a profession. Why didn't we?

We didn't because most everyone in the IT industry (from grunts through IT managers) lies first to themselves and then to each other about the poor results of their work. We have the same phenomenon with Y2K we've always had, only this time the deadline is non-negotiable. This doesn't make us worse than other professions, it's just unfortunate that our industry has the world in a stranglehold.

Since politicians/media also love to lie, putting IT and the government/media together on the Y2K case is worse than locking the hen in the henhouse.

(To the belligerent, yes, I know there are many honorable exceptions, I don't have the space for nuances here and Y2K doesn't allow us the time. That we don't call "lying" by its name anymore is beyond the scope of my post).

Here is the key fact, listen up all:

The so-called diminishment of the problem is based on air, because the claimed results are technically impossible. The game is up because it is TOO LATE. As Fred Brooks said thirty years ago, nine pregnant women working one month each won't produce a baby. It has always been that simple. Y2K has never been about "technic" but about culture and people, honesty and deception.

IMO, Drew, the phenomenon you cite represents the initial panic-reaction of public figures. In other words, they're now becoming aware for the first time and THEY'RE SCARED. Because they don't trust the public, they think negation is the way to go.

They don't realize that the public is, by and large, more mature and competent than they are taken as a whole, if and when given honest information. This is a grave miscalculation on their part, since the public will indeed react EVENTUALLY with panic and fury when they realize that we (IT) and they (the government/media) essentially lied to them all along.

There is a chance, though slight, that our systems are remarkably more resilient than we had any right to expect. Certainly, people remain more resilient than machines, though less so every decade.

But the computers themselves don't care. Good intentions don't move them. The code is broken, it's not being fixed or tested adequately.

I'm especially tired of the cliche, "even the experts don't know what is going to happen with Y2K." Wrong.

Something bad is going to happen, very bad. It is going to cost some people around the world their lives (starting with elderly and children). Whether it's 5,000 people or 5M people or 50M people or more, it will still be bad, because it was entirely preventable.

Attention CL and Factfinder: even if U.S. utilities stay up 100%, it will be bad.

We don't need to assign a number to assert the certainty of the coming "badness". Let's spend the few months remaining by making sure that a few people, at least, keep telling the truth about Y2K "in the large". Believe me, our fellow citizens world-wide are going to spend years examining the lies and, maybe, some of the liars. I know I will.

IT (and the utility industry, if we're lucky) is going to be subject to post-Y2K reforms, some wise, some asinine, that will make our then-21st century heads spin.

I say without any gloating but only sadness that very soon we will be able to stop speculating and begin enduring and thinking about a post-Y2K world. We're in for a technical disaster that will be discussed 100 years from now in the history books as the paradigmatic lesson of how NOT to build a stable, humane civilization.

It's the threads on this forum > 2001 that will be truly interesting.

-- Anonymous, March 10, 1999

Drew:

I think that government officials and IT managers think that Y2K is a "software project" when actually a potential homicide. Revenge is hard tame without justice no matter what congress says.

"Betrayal wears two faces, both easy to explain. One is what you say and do to bring another human pain. When you refuse to act though you know the good to do; when you refuse to speak what's right you've worn the face of number two." -- Charlie Peacock (Song: "Drowning Man", Album: "Secret of Time", 1990)

-- Anonymous, March 10, 1999

"To know what is the right thing to do, then not to do it is the worst form of cowardice." - Confucius

How many issues does this apply to with our current political, media and business leaders for the last half decade? Y2K and almost all the other major issues of the last five years are excellent examples of the predominant lack of courage we have among those in positions of leadership and power in the world, not just this country.

If we see someone exhibiting courage, it's unfortunately the courage to commit a criminal, terrorist or otherwise heinous act.

WW

-- Anonymous, March 13, 1999