Many expected catastrophe. In reality, the industry coped well and
is now in good shape for the future, writes Bill Goodwin
Two weeks into the new year, and the millennium bug is beginning
to look like one of the greatest non-events in history. After dire
predictions of global recession, nuclear meltdowns, and food
shortages, 1 January was a serious anti-climax.
The backlash has started. In the US, outraged businesses,
convinced that they have spent millions fixing a problem they never
had, are threatening to sue the pants off their IT suppliers.
Computer experts have received death threats from disappointed
fanatics. And university professors are accusing software suppliers
of make a fast buck by blowing the problem out of proportion.
The truth is that the millennium bug did strike. The safety
systems in 10 nuclear power stations across the world failed
simultaneously, electrocardiograph machines stopped working, and
the US's crucial defence intelligence satellites were out of action
for hours.
In any other week any of these failures would have been big
news. They seemed trivial only because people, perhaps
unsurprisingly given the hype, were expecting problems of
apocalyptic proportions.
The story could have been very different if organisations had
not taken Y2K so seriously. Over the past three years the UK has
spent an estimated £20bn fixing the bug. By the time 1 January came
round most problems had been solved, and IT staff were able to mop
up the rest over the long bank holiday. But with so few major bug
failures hitting the headlines, commentators are seriously
questioning whether the problem was not more hype than
substance.
Italy and Russia have been wheeled out as examples of countries
that spent far less on Y2K, and yet have emerged unscathed. But
claims that the Italian government spent only £1.6m on on the bug
are misleading. According to GartnerGroup, £1.6m is simply the
running costs of Italy's year 2000 co-ordination office. The figure
takes no account of the billions spent by government departments
and Italian businesses testing, upgrading and replacing equipment
and software. Russia, strapped for cash,has genuinely spent far
less than the UK, but its work is far from over.
Businesses and government organisations have moved quickly to
find manual workarounds to the problem, or in many cases have
simply moved the clock back pre-2000. But the equipment is still
not compliant and will eventually have to be replaced.
Margaret Beckett, who headed the Government's Y2K work, said
this week, "It is not true that some of international partners
'spent next to nothing'.We know from our many contacts in the
International Year 2000 Co-operation Centre that a huge amount of
work was done across the world, including Russia, Asia, Latin
America and Africa."
The key question is whether Britain's top businesses really have
spent hundreds of millions solving a problem which never really
existed?
IT directors are adamant that the answer is no. "If we had not
addressed the Y2K problem the business would have literally
stopped," says Bob Hammersley, senior IT services manager at
Sainsbury's. "It is clear that the point of sales terminals and
crucial elements of the supply chain would have stopped dead if we
had just sat back and ignored the problem."
The problems, though, are not yet over. Experts suggest that
only 5% of millennium bug problems will actually take place in the
first few days of January. The rest will emerge over the course of
the year, as different systems look forward to month-ends,
year-ends and critical dates such as 29 February and 1 April. There
is a danger that IT staff may be tempted to take their eyes off the
problem now that 1 January has passed. Unless they stay vigilant,
undiscovered errors could cause businesses serious problems.
Management information systems may be particularly at risk,
computerservices company, Cap Gemini warns. The bug may strike when
programmes start looking back into 1999 or make date calculations
involving the year 2000. If businesses are lucky, the systems will
simply fail. If they are unlucky they will provide managers with
financial analyses that are dangerously wrong.
For organisations that have addressed Y2K none of this should be
a realproblem.IT departments should be able to fix the problems as
they happen, without having to hire extra staff, or having their
programmers on emergency standby. Of course, if they have ignored
Y2K, they may wellfindthemselves swamped with so many problems that
their businesses could be placed in real danger.
In theory, Y2K should not have just been a case of spending
money to stand still. For many organisations the year 2000
programme could generate some significant spin-offs. The problem
has forced many organisations to analyse their IT systems in a
systematic way for the first time. They have taken the opportunity
to rationalise their hardware and their software. And they have a
comprehensive inventory of their equipment, which they can use for
future planning.
More importantly, organisations have been forced to learn how to
manage large, multi-disciplinary projects. This could prove
invaluable as businesses gear up to adapt their IT for electronic
commerce, or Britain's entry into the euro.
But it would be very easy to let these lessons slip through the
net. As GartnerGroup's Andy Kyte points out, most organisations are
not learning organisations; they struggle from one crisis to the
next, failing to take the lessons on board.
Unless organisations proactively decide to learn from their
experience, then the Y2K critics will, at least partially be proved
right - it will be an exercise with very few business benefits.
Unfortunately, says Kyte: "We don't see that many organisation
making fundamental changes to the management of IT on the basis of
lessons learned from Y2K."
Y2K remediation benefits
Y2K - was it all worth it?
Danger dates for 2000
14 January: first semi-monthly payday
31 January: first monthly close, first monthly payday
28 February: to ensure the leap year is being properly
accounted for
29 February: to ensure the leap year is being properly
accounted for
30 February: to ensure that this date in NOT processed
(found in some PC applications)
31 February: to ensure that this date in NOT processed
(found in some PC applications)
1 March: to ensure date calculations have taken leap year
into account
31 March: first quarterly close
3 April: first business day after quarter ends Friday 31
March
5 April - 6 April: this is the first fiscal roll-over
following Y2K (for many including the US government)
14 April: last business day for US 199 tax
transactions
15 April: 1999 tax filing deadline for US
17 April: first business day after tax filing date with a
two-digit month (10/10/)
31 December: 366th day of the year. This could be a
problem for systems that use Short Julian days
1 January 2001: first day of the 21st century