ITAA's Year 2000 Outlook
November 6, 1998                      Volume 3, No. 41

Published by the Information Technology Association of
America, Arlington, VA

Bob Cohen, Editor bcohen@itaa.org

Read in over 80 countries around the world

ITAA's Year 2000 Outlook is published every Friday to
help all organizations deal more effectively with the
Year 2000 software conversion.  To create a
subscription to this free publication, please visit
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ITAA's Year 2000 Outlook is sponsored in part by CACI
International Inc., DMR Consulting Group Inc., and
Y2Kplus

Gartner Report: Y2K Too Shall Pass

The GartnerGroup is gunning for Mad Max. Or at least
the world-gone-mad mentality this movie brings to mind.
Clearly distressed by Y2K "gloom and doom" sayers and
the extreme measures some advocate in response, the
company is now trying to pour oil on troubled
millennial waters.  Or as one of its leading
consultants says, "pour oil on the hysteria."

And perhaps rid the world of a little snakeoil in the
process?

The GartnerGroup is known more for its consulting work
with private clients than missionary work with average
citizens.  But the company recently released a public
report intended to help just plain folks cope with the
stress of a digitally dysfunctional world.

The report is certainly designed to help cooler heads
prevail.  While survivalists may urge mountain retreats
or mounds of freeze dried edibles, the Gartner Group
seemingly predicts that the Year 2000 rollover will be
a few days spent with relatively minor techno
troubles.  Troubles more of "gol dang it" than
Gotterdammerung variety.  And certainly not modern
society's one-way ticket ride to Cyberia.

At least that's certainly the way one of the report's
authors sees it.  "We don't need a run on the banks due
to hysteria and panic," says GartnerGroup Vice
President and Director of Research Jim Cassell.

The analyst says his firm is working with the American
Banking Association to head off such a possibility.  He
says the ABA is very concerned about people needlessly
withdrawing large sums in the run up to the rollover.

The collective cashing of one month's paycheck, Cassell
says, would empty the national till.  "There is not
enough physical money," he says.

"Withdrawing funds from banks or liquidating
investments is not warranted"

GartnerGroup assumes most enterprises will address
mission-critical systems so that 90 percent of the
systems that do fail will be corrected within three
days," the new report notes.  Seventy percent will be
back in two days, it predicts.

Cassell compares the situation to a hurricane.  Pay
attention, be prepared, but do not be blown away by
fear and doubt.  A stampede to the boonies isn't on
Gartner's to-do list either.  Citing the "incredible
hysteria" he hears, Cassell encourages people to look
at the situation in perspective and separate panic from
practicality.  Cassell says he lives in Florida, where
the "worst day is 60 degrees.  I'm not worried about
buying a space heater," he says.

So what is a person to do to prepare for a few days of
technologically stormy weather?  Cassell suggests that
like his Florida example, physical location will go a
long way to determining what steps are necessary.  Some
moves, however, seem universal.  Cassell says having
the equivalent of two-weeks salary on hand is not a bad
idea.  And a five-day contingency supply of
medications, fuel and food are good too.

"Individuals should prepare for limited duration,
localized failures of services and infrastructure
rather than an apocalypse," the report states, but
warns, "The type and number of failures will vary
geographically and cannot really be predicted."

On the GartnerGroup's Personal Year 2000 Risk
Assessment checklist are insurance policy reviews,
prescription refills, physical and dental checkups,
first-aid supplies, cellular phone backups, topped off
gasoline and home heating oil tanks, early driver's
license renewals, and stocked water.  "The most
critical factors for most people are clearly the
availability of telephone service and electric power,"
the report notes, citing the vulnerability of automated
teller machines, emergency services, credit cards,
electronic funds transfer and the like.

Gartner's optimistic view is not necessarily global.
"In many cases there is no effective way for a non-U.S.
person to meaningfully assess the risk posed by such
things as infrastructure and financial services," the
report observes.  "Few countries have as rigorous
reporting requirements as the U.S.  Securities and
Exchange Commission (SEC), and individuals have no
leverage on enterprises such as insurance and utility
companies.  Such enterprises generally do not provide
specific responses to individuals.  " Listen to
whatever public pronouncements are available, then take
a conservative position, the report suggests.

Back in the U.S., Cassell says institutions like the
SEC and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will
help people weather the storm.  But it won't be the
kind of storm that floods cities or blows down
buildings.  "You may not get [some] products or
services for five days.  It will be inconvenient,
disruptive, but it's not the end of the world," he
notes.

At least not for individuals.  Companies, according to
Cassell, could be a different story.  Some of these, he
says, will be "devastated" by lawsuits and other
problems.  Of course the economic consequences of such
impacts could mean more than a blinking VCR to many
American households.  But even a lost job or depressed
stock price isn't the end of times.

So put away the sackcloth and hair shirts for now.
Instead, prepare for the purely practical.  Like
checking that investment companies are providing
adequate status information.  That insurance policies
cover date related physical damage.  That health co
ncerns are tended to ahead of time.  And that neighbors
are covered too.

"People should not ask 'How can I survive the century
boundary?' They should ask 'How can my neighborhood and
I survive the century boundary?' People should
volunteer to help the elderly or sick, and should also
volunteer their services to their local, city or town
governments," the report advises.

The free report is available at www.gartnerweb.com.

Jurisdictions Collaborate in Battle of the Bug

Maybe you had to be here.  This week a distraught man
jumped from the Capital Beltway's Woodrow Wilson
Bridge-one of the busiest thoroughfares in the United
States.  Before he was pulled from the water with minor
injuries, Ivin L. Pointer managed to creat e a colossal
five-hour, 20-mile traffic jam that had even
gridlock-hardened Washington commuters upset.

The Wilson Bridge links Maryland and Virginia, crossing
over the Potomac River at a stretch under the
jurisdiction of the District of Columbia.  In bringing
the beltway to a screeching halt, Pointer pointed up
the very real inter-relationships between loc alities
and the vulnerabilities of their interlocking systems.
The bridge of course is just one system.  Jurisdictions
may need to coordinate in numerous ways, from health
services to communications to fire and rescue to power
and water and more.

Does this story of interconnected systems begin to
sound familiar?  Meet Don Evans.  He chairs the
Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) IT
Committee (COG is a regional government policy
coordinating body).  To Evans, the "guy on the bridge"
is a vivid reminder that it only takes one bad
microchip to stop a production line.  Or even a metro
area?  "If humans were microchips," Evans said, "we'd
see similar failures all the time."

Evans and his multi-jurisdictional committee have taken
up Y2K as cross-border concern, and they have begun a
series of monthly meetings to share information and
figure out how and where the bug might bite commonly
shared public services.

The COG official says local governments know how to
cope with single point failures.  But this isn't that.
"The Year 2000 raises the possibility of multiple
concurrent failure events," he says.  So his committee
also meets on Y2K issues with COG committe es on public
safety, transportation and health as well as with area
businesses.  The goal is to figure out what systems may
fail, how they will impact the Washington metropolitan
area, the actions that must be taken in response, and
how to set service res toration priorities.  "We're
making geographic specific assessments in order to
target our emergency management for the most likely
probabilities," Evans says.

The city of Los Angeles doesn't need a jumper to be
reminded that bad things can and do happen to nice
infrastructure systems.  The federal government has
declared LA a disaster area ten times since 1992.  City
officials know something about responding to
emergencies.

Even so, the LA's Emergency Preparedness Division hired
three contingency planners this week to deal with Y2K
issues.  Part of their mission will be educating the
public on how to be prepared.  According to Assistant
Division Head Bob Canfield, the curren t situation is
something like what the state faced with the El Nino
weather pattern.  Canfield says the public received so
much information ahead of time, the whole subject
became something of a joke.  "Then the rains began,"
Canfield said.

The El Nino may have washed away much of the humor but
the well-informed city was relatively well prepared to
deal with the soggy situation.  Canfield is concerned
that the disaster-prone nature of Los Angeles may work
against it when Y2K rolls around.  " We've had water or
electrical systems knocked out for two or three days,"
he says.  "We've never had them out for a week or two.
I'm worried that people have been through so many
disasters…the experience may cause them to be more sure
[about systems] tha n they have a right to be."

Will Y2K really rock Los Angeles?  Southern California
has one deadly earthquake every ten to 15 years.  In
1980 the city created a unified crisis command
structure to respond to such emergencies, with on-going
emergency planning and pre-assigned responsi bility for
managing debris clearance, shelter, volunteers,
building inspections and like tasks.  Now this group,
the Emergency Operations Organization, has turned its
attention to the Year 2000.

"In the last six months, we've been pushing hard to
turn Y2K from a technical issue to an emergency
planning and emergency management issue," Canfield
said.  The city, county and surrounding jurisdictions
recently completed a joint multi-day workshop on c
ritical infrastructure protection, with substantial
time spent on Year 2000 issues.

Right now, there may be more issues than answers.
Especially for a city that controls the airport,
harbor, and municipal water and power utility, plus 40
departments of government.  In response to the century
rollover, Los Angeles must look at its existi ng
emergency plans and traditional assumptions through a
Y2K filter.  One such assumption is that system
redundancy will help the city communicate.  To that
end, LA operates its own satellite and land-based
systems.  Canfield questions whether embedded ch ip
failures will throw a wrench into these backup plans.

Of course not all jurisdictions are taking the issue so
seriously.  Y2K activist Steven Davis, a budget manager
in Montgomery County, Maryland, who participates in the
COG Y2K initiative, says regional responses around the
country range from a full court press to precious
little or nothing at all.  Davis advocates a holistic
approach with local government coordination on budget
and finance, procurement, insurance, public safety,
public transit, public information and public works.

Unfortunately, in many communities, local government
has failed to play this role.  Community preparedness
falls to individuals acting independently of local
officials.  While Davis says some of these people come
equipped with survivalist views or new age
philosophies, most are just concerned citizens.

Ian Wells, a software engineer in Lowell, MA, is trying
to engage officials in his home town but says it's an
uphill battle.  Wells says they have other priorities
and little awareness of the larger community issue.
Although he is working with a small gr oup of similarly
concerned citizens in Lowell, Wells is worried that as
awareness of the issue grows, personal preparations
will swamp further consideration of community
preparedness.  Time will tell.

Fed Says Institutions are Tapping into Tests

The Federal Reserve says 3000 U.S. depository
institutions have conducted Y2K tests using the Fed's
financial services applications.  Available since last
July, the Shared Test Days program allows depository
institutions to test their use of the Federal Reserve's
applications as well as electronic connections to the
Fed in a future date simulated environment.
Applications include funds transfer, the automated
clearing house (FedACH), book entry securities,
Treasury-auction automated processing, trading-r oom
auction processing, the FedLine Open Market system, the
Treasury Tax and Loan system, central bank accounting,
the Accounting Balance Monitoring system, selected
check and check adjustments applications, and the
Electronic Tax application.  Program details are
available at www.frbsf.org/fiservices/cdc/.

Business to Business

Computer Technology Associates Inc., Bethesda, MD, has
been awarded a Y2K contract by the Port Authority of
New York and New Jersey.

Syntel, Inc., Troy, MI, has been ranked number two on
Forbes magazine's "The 200 Best Small Companies in
America" list.

Landmark Graphics Corporation, a wholly owned business
unit of Halliburton Company, Houston, TX, has announced
the availability of Release 98Plus, a Y2K-ready version
of their UNIX and Windows applications for exploration,
drilling, and production.

ITAA Y2K Information Center

Solution Providers Directory
http://www.itaa.org/script/2000vend.cfm

ITAA*2000 Certification Program
http://www.itaa.org/2000cert.htm

Outlook Archive
http://www.itaa.org/script/get2klet.cfm

Legislative and Litigation Table
http://www.itaa.org/Y2Klaw.htm

Calendar
http://www.itaa.org/y2kcal.htm

Vendor/User Status Questionnaires
http://www.itaa.org/questmain1.htm


Copyright ITAA 1998.  All rights reserved.  The
Information Technology Association of America, 1616 N.
Fort Myer Drive, Suite 1300, Arlington, VA 22209.
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