InformationWeek

February 1, 1999

Secret CIO:
The Crisis That Won't Be

Fixing the inevitable Y2K glitches rapidly will be the key to surviving the new millennium

By Herbert W. Lovelace

Herbert W.
Lovelace

ot so many months ago, if you mentioned the Y2K problem to a person outside of the computer industry, chances are you had to explain what you meant. Today, it's almost impossible to pick up a newspaper or magazine without seeing at least one report on the Y2K crisis.

The last time the calendar was on the verge of lining up three zeroes in a row, the upcoming change was also viewed with alarm--but there was a lot less written about the impending doom of civilization. Of course, in the year 999, Gutenberg hadn't been born and thus had not gotten around to inventing the printing press, which no doubt had something to do with the lack of press coverage.

It may be instructive to know that as the end of the first millennium approached, there were many would-be prophets and sages (the management consultants of that era) who wandered throughout Europe preaching (now known as "billable hours") the gospel of the coming apocalypse. The end of the world was predicted. People prepared for the judgment day.

When I see some of the predictions of what will happen when the clock strikes midnight on Dec. 31, I think of the needless trepidation that occurred a mere 10 centuries before people began to depend on computers. Taking the historical perspective, I will not buy tons of food and move to the desert, away from the potential screaming hordes that will overrun the cities as civilization crumbles.

I have come to the conclusion that because of the massive remediation under way, we'll wake up on Jan. 1, 2000, and give a big yawn--not just because of staying out too late while celebrating the big triple zero, but also because the crisis-to-be has turned out to be the crisis-that-wasn't.

Yes, there will be problems. Some banks will be unable to process checks; in more than a few places, factories will find machines don't work as they should; and there will be several power outages. But worldwide, the result will be no worse than an inconvenience--on the order of a major winter snowstorm that disrupts our plans for a few days. The big issue will be how fast we're able to restore things to normal--not whether we can.

There are two keys to making Y2K a nonevent. The first is the one on which everyone has been concentrating: finding, fixing, and testing the systems and chips that run much of our daily lives.

The second is even more important. It isn't that things will break because of the year 2000 problem; they will. What's significant is how fast we can fix them. If the payroll system doesn't work, or if the order-entry system becomes sick, we all know what we will do until it's corrected.

It's crucial to build a contingency plan that starts off with the premise that something happened that we didn't consider. The essential element is to have a process for determining who will define the emergency, who will be on the crisis team, and who will make and implement the decisions. Then success depends on how fast we can fix the problem.

As I wrote in "The Year 2000 Advantage" (May 27, 1996, p. 112), our company will do the appropriate amount of find-it and fix-it, but is also expending a lot of effort creating a SWAT team to ensure we have the tools available--systems documentation, test files, and plant controller schematics--along with a whole set of procedures for what to do if something evil, ugly, and unexpected, happens--as it no doubt will.

I don't know if this emphasis on speed of repair will work. But it sounds like a good insurance policy to me.

I'll let you know when next January rolls around.

Herbert W. Lovelace is the CIO at a multibillion-dollar international company. Herb practices his day job under an alias and has changed the names of colleagues to protect the guilty. Send him E-mail at lovelace@home.com. He'll provide real answers--and whimsical comments--to your questions on InformationWeek Online at www.informationweek.com.