Is contingency planning a prudent action for the protection of life and property or an admission of doubts about the completion of Y2K repairs?

How say ye?

Jim

-- Anonymous, August 22, 1999

Answers

Both.

Steve

-- Anonymous, August 22, 1999

Is contingency planning a prudent action for the protection of life and property or an admission of doubts about the completion of Y2K repairs?

A good question. I think the correct answer is "It depends". It is not too difficult to tell the difference between contingency planning that is "good" and contingency planning that is "bad" and contingency planning that is meaningless.

Contingency planning is a good thing to be doing when you are looking externally. The implication is that all internal problems are fixed. You are concerned with guarding as best you can against external failures. This usually involves looking at critical supply lines and critical customers. Perhaps stockpiling things that may be in short supply. Undoing the JIT system as much as possible whereever you see risks.

In an industry like the power industry it is also appropriate to run drills that anticipate possible failures. A walk through the process of black starting a plant is worthwhile even though the probability of having to do it is very small. Another good thing to walk through are the shutdown sequence for the nukes. These are all good contingency plans, plans the best companies are completing now. The last piece of the puzzle.

On the other hand, there are contingency plans that are clearly desperation. Mostly these relate to internal failures. A good example of this is found in John Koskinen's most recent report if you look hard. A lot of unemployment insurance systems are in trouble in a lot of states. There is a contingency plan to port a generic UI program to PCs for the States to use if the system does fail. This will cost a lot, and trying to implement it will be horrible, so it signals desperation. A plan to write welfare cheques by hand "just in case" the system fails is an admission of doubt.

"Most of the critical systems are repaired, and contingency plans are being put in place for the rest" does not equal good news. These are fantasy documents that mean bad news.

Finally, the Navy report is a third kind of contingency plan: the fantasy document that is simply meaningless. It is like a contingency plan to limit the damage of a large oil spill or chemical spill or a nuclear meltdown. Plans like this always turn out to be woefully inadequate, essentially useless except for the warm feeling and sense of security they provide before the disaster.

The reality for the Navy is that but for a few functions, the military depends on the infrastructure just like everybody else. If the power goes off on a Naval base, they will - for the most part - sit in the dark and wait for the power to come back, just like everyone else. Yes, they have some options for generating emergency power, but they are basically out of business until the juice is restored. A good staff officer can say that in 5,000 words. A great one will produce 10,000 but none of it will turn out to be useful.

Tom

-- Anonymous, August 22, 1999

IMHO it is the former: Prudent action. Contingency plans are a required part of any large scale y2k-effort.

I must admit that at first I was a bit insulted when I was asked to write contingency plans for things we had already taken care of..."But I tested those systems in and out, and now you want me to assume that they'll fail and what I'm going to do about it?" But this is where I had a "paradigm shift", and realized that it doesn't matter how much remediation is completed, plans must still be written and implemented. It's part of "getting it" with Y2k.

I agree with Tom regarding plans for things outside our control. Plans must be written for problems that outside entities could cause (fuel supplies, other utility problems, etc.).

-- Anonymous, August 23, 1999

Contingency planning is normal for Utilities.

The Y2K contingency plan is special made for this occasion based on doubt about the completion of Y2K repairs.

The Y2K contingency plan is now focussing on all the other contingency plans in the industry. The main questions now are about stopping and starting.

Will doubt become fear or not ?

-- Anonymous, August 23, 1999

It depends. For some, the answer would be neither, as they're only making a contingency plan because their lawyers, or NERC, or FERC, or somebody else says they have to.

For the average individual who has decided to make personal contingency plans, Steve's answer, "Both" is completely on target.

For some businesses which know they began too late to do an adequate job, or which know there have been critical project slippages, it's not an either-or question, but one in which the contingency planning is a direct result, not of "doubts" but of certainty.

Other businesses fall into a category similar to the individual preparer's answer of "Both", because they recognize the common sense dictum, most recently expressed in the movie "Forrest Gump", of the phrase, "Sh-t happens." And they add to your "doubts about completion", doubts also about the competence and/or efficacy of vendor solutions, testing, and the myriad interconnective potentialities involved in even a completed project. Maybe they're baseball fans and recognize the concept that even if you're out ahead 20 runs to nothing, "it ain't over till it's over". Maybe they're just smart businessmen who want to leave as little to chance as possible, and are covering all the bases they can think of.

It's a mixed bag. My personal opinion is that it's smarter to have contingency plans for whatever reason, than not to have them.

-- Anonymous, August 24, 1999