Mar. 31 Govt deadline - For code repairs or implementation?

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Could someone please clarify this for me?

The govt's Mar. 31 deadline (which K-man says will be met by 90% of agencies): Is this the deadline for code repairs and upgrades, or is this the deadline for systems to be tested and implemented?

In other words, when we hear next Wednesday that X-percent of agencies met the deadline, does this mean they met an interim deadline and still have a ton of testing and implementation ahead of them, or does it mean fully-compliant systems are now installed and running?

-- rick blaine (y2kazoo@hotmail.com), March 26, 1999

Answers

This is an "arbitrary" deadline for completion of ALL Y2K fixes to "mission critical" (again arbitrary) systems.

I DO know that life is miserable for top-level managers (not geeks or CIOs, but the top-level people) who have systems in their center/agency which fails to make the March 31st deadline. If they fail, they must make DAILY progress reports, look really bad, and generally lead miserable lives until the "mission critical" system is fixed.

-- Anonymous99 (Anonymous99@anonymous.com), March 26, 1999.


This is an excellent question, one that I attempted to raise on a previous thread. The recent OMB report shows precentages indicating that 76% (or something like that) of agency systems have been IMPLEMENTED, whatever that means to the feds.

Yet the March 31 deadline has been established to ensure adequate time for testing, so they say.

Which is it? March 31 to implement or March 31 to finish remediation and begin testing. This is a crucial difference, as all of us here know.

If anyone can provide some clarification, it would be greatly appreciated.

R.

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), March 26, 1999.


i don't have time at the moment to check (and it may be a while before i do), but i *believe* - as i recall- that it's actually not standard. in other words, some agencies may have done some testing, but not necessarily all. i *think* the general rule is just have to have the remediation completed (or supposedly completed).

according to page 110 of the senate report (bottom right hand column): "additionally, a large portion of testing, known to be one of the largest portions of the overall y2k effort, is yet to come."

incidentally, just a few sentences before that is this gem:

"many schedules show a steep improvement curve just before key omb milestones."

imagine that.

if and/or when i can find out more about this- which should be by the middle of next week- i'll post it here.

-- Drew Parkhill/CBN News (y2k@cbn.org), March 26, 1999.


Thanks, Drew. Sorry to hear that your shift/caps key is broken. (Just kidding. I know you're busier than a one-armed juggler.)

-- rick blaine (y2kazoo@hotmail.com), March 26, 1999.

It like your neighbor calling up from his basement "Don't worry, it's only a small leak" but doesn't let come inside, nor call a plumber, nor borrow a sump pump, nor turn off power to the lights down there, or gas to the furnace..

At the time it was "publicized", March 31 seemed long enough away from the politicians that is was "safe" to declare "We will be completely ready by March 31, 1999....." Also, at that time, they (the politicians dreaming up the schedule for the press who were going to mindlessly repeat it without checking facts and completion numbers already available) did not seriously expect anybody would hold them (the politicians) accountable for the stupidity of their schedule.

In addition, they (the political managers) knew that - if a "few" schedules slipped from March 31, there is lots of time to recover, and so they can still avoid the media NOTICING things are falling apart around their ankles as the "water in the basement rises".

So, the March 31 date is meaningless, and never meant anything to the workers doing their jobs repairing problems. It never could have been fully met by any agency, else some would have "bell curved" early, some on-time, and some late. Asis, if ANY federal agancy had finished anywhere in the country, it would have been promoted more than the Social Security agnacy was promoted back in Dec.

But NOTHING has been finished since then.

The only thing we will learn Mar 31 is which agencies are closest to finishing by comparing the magnitude of the schedule slips to each other. That is, if we could tell if we were ever told in the first place how many systems the government has, how many of those are critical systems, and how many remediated and fully tested systems anybody actually had. But they evidently don't know.

-- Robert A Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), March 26, 1999.



Rick,

This isn't an answer to your question, but I thought you might like to see an article about the government's September 30, 1998 deadline:

http://www.fcw.com/pubs/fcw/1998/1005/fcw-newsy2kshort-10-5-98.html

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), March 26, 1999.


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