I know this is a little dated news, but I have not seen it reported on in the archives nor have I seen such a clear example of number fiddling of what is and what is not y2k compiant by government, and therefore you all might be interested in some hard facts and evidence on bogus compliancy reporting. Although we know this sort of innovative compliance has been going on its nice to see it blank and white.

It also brings to the surface a very troubling point. Just how much work has not been done. If this is any indication of what is going on, then we may be able to start making educated guesses that somewhere in the neighborhood of 65+% of the systems out there have not even been checked because the were determined not to be mission critical.

Summary:

MoD runs into political minefield over Y2K compliance.

In Sept 98 UK MOD (Ministry of Defense) said they 6,189 mission critical systems. (They also had completed *all inventory and classification of all systems* according to their Sept 98 report which is now misssing from their web site) In Dec 98 UK MOD said they have 1,672 mission critical systems. So the million dollar question is what happened to 4,517 systems? The MOD had promissed that all mission critical systems would be made compliant by 12.31.1999.

"Ian Hugo, assistant director of Taskforce 2000, accused the MoD of narrowing the scope of its Y2K project without offering an explanation.

"Hugo said the department has promised to make 100 per cent of critical systems millennium compliant in time - but the only way they can keep that promise is to drop systems off the list. "There is more and more severe prioritisation going on. I don't know what's dropping off the critical list, but I suspect it must be very important. And once a system is off the critical list, it's more likely to fail because it receives less attention."

Well I did a little checking on the MOD site and can say I personally confirmed that the MOD had re-classified all these systems by December 98 as non-mission critical because I had the actual MOD reports and numbers to look at myself and checked them. Now however the reports are missing. May be someone can poke around and find them. These were the URLs I had for the actual reports when I checked this info in March 1999.

http://www.mod.uk/dgics/dcsa_web/dseg_web/year2k/reports.htm

November 1998 http://www.mod.uk/dgics/dcsa_web/dseg_web/year2k/nov_rep/modall.htm#PROGRESS

September 1998 http://www.mod.uk/dgics/dcsa_web/dseg_web/year2k/cabrepsep.htm#progress

Now if they added 65% of what was designated as Mission Critical and reclassified them has non-mission critical and if you add the systems that were already non-mission critical that means over 65% of their systems have not even been checked. If memory serves me correctly there were about twice as many non-mission critical systems mission critical systems already on the list in the Sept 98 report.

FULL TEXT OF ARTICLE FOLLOWS:

http://www.silicon.com/public/door?REQUNIQ=917289467&6004REQEVENT=&REQINT1=28047&REQSTR1=newsnow

Monday 25 January 1999 0:30am

MoD runs into political minefield over Y2K compliance

The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) is being accused of trying to hide its millennium bug problem for fear of generating national panic.

In the space of four months, 4,500 systems that were once considered critical to national security have disappeared from the MoD's publicly filed millennium compliance report. In September, the MoD's compliance project listed 6,189 systems as mission critical. But by the time the December report was released, the number had dropped to 1,672.

Ian Hugo, assistant director of Taskforce 2000, accused the MoD of narrowing the scope of its Y2K project without offering an explanation. "They lost almost 5,000 systems between September and December," noted Hugo.

Hugo said the department has promised to make 100 per cent of critical systems millennium compliant in time - but the only way they can keep that promise is to drop systems off the list. "There is more and more severe prioritisation going on. I don't know what's dropping off the critical list, but I suspect it must be very important. And once a system is off the critical list, it's more likely to fail because it receives less attention."

Shadow defence spokesman Keith Simpson, said the situation is extremely worrying. "If you had a breakdown of systems, you could have a degree of paralysis. It could be quite critical if you're in operations in Bosnia or in Iraq with a lot of systems going down. That would slow up the decision-making process. It could threaten life."

The MoD has so far refused to explain why it has made the changes to its critical list. "The MoD will never tell us," said shadow defence spokesman Robert Key. "But you don't need any imagination to work out that the effects could be severe."

However, an MoD spokesman insisted the allegations are "absolutely not true".

"There are some systems that have been taken off the critical list," the spokesman admitted, "that's because they aren't considered critical." As compliance work developed it became apparent that certain systems, previously considered critical, were no longer so," he claimed. "There are no safety implications," he insisted.

However, in a later conversation with Silicon.com, he denied that any systems have been downgraded from critical to non-critical. Instead, he said some had been made redundant, and some were aggregated where they had previously been considered individually.

Paul Beaver, group spokesman for military specialist Janes Defence Weekly, said: "I suspect there's some fudging going on here. The political masters have said to them 'get the list down', and the civil servants are complying."

Robin Guenier, executive director of Taskforce 2000, agreed that the MoD is under pressure to "get the records right" to avoid panicking the public or embarrassing the government. But he warned: "The government is in danger of laying a trap for itself. If they claim everything's good, and then it goes wrong, people will get pretty damned angry."

-- Interested Spectator (is@the_ring.side), December 16, 1999

Answers

I've found the reports. They're at:

SEPTEMBER 1998:

http://tap.ccta.gov.uk/year2000/y2krepor.nsf/searchbyquarter/0FD77B2E 20D051E38025666D0055DE9B?opendocument

DECEMBER 1998:

http://tap.ccta.gov.uk/year2000/y2krepor.nsf/searchbyquarter/34E1E0CA 8A910688802566BF00485FB0?opendocument

Take a look at Section 13 Progress. Notice the re-organization. To clear through the fog (must be something to with London) just total up how many systems were Mission Critical in both reports. BTW they had about 30,000 systems in total to checkout.

They also state they have finished all Non-Mission Critical system too. Then why the re-classification? Did they make "mistake"? If so then that means after completing inventory the mis-classified 2/3 of their Mission Critical Systems. Folks, this just a report on a piece of paper and they can't get it correct and we are supposed to believe they can actually fix this stuff as well. No I don't think this is a mistake, and besides they never said it was any way.

So that leaves only one option - fiddling of the numbers.

-- Interested Spectator (is@the_ring.side), December 16, 1999.