Anybody who needs to process data for any year from 2000 on needs to be aware of this NOW. The key to understanding is to call them the "Two-digit-year problems". Many computer applications only allow two digits for the year in a date entry or storage. How will a user tell the computer that they mean the year 2000? If they enter '00', the software may reject the zeroes as an invalid entry. An accounting or order processing package may try to add 1 to 99 and crash with a data error trying to force the result of 100 into two digits. Worse, it may accept the data, giving the user a false sense of security, but interpret '00' as 1900, in the same way as it interpreted '97' as meaning 1997. Now people born in 1946 are -46 years old. And it's not just the obvious computers. Safety-critical process control equipment may fail because it tracks process data over time and the calculation goes wrong.
In effect, many companies have bought (worse, are still buying!) software with an expiry date of 31 Dec 1999.
The reason senior managers don't believe this is that they are used to computers performing amazing tasks, and being brought down by such an absurdly simple problem scarcely seems credible to them. They need to pay attention: directors can be made personally liable for the neglect of problems that threaten the survival of their businesses. The business chain will only be as strong as its weakest link, and if your key supplier or customer fails, your business is threatened too. VISA are now threatening to fine merchants who cannot accept cards with a 00 expiry date. British Telecom has given its 1800 core suppliers a warning that it will stop doing business with companies who can't guarantee their internal IT systems will be year 2000 compliant. You must also check that your electronic trading partners will be compliant too. Banks are looking for assurances before making or renewing loans. Auditors will note whether you have addressed the issue seriously. Insurance companies have already issued disclaimers of liability because the year 2000 is not an unforeseen event. Shareholders and market analysts will be quick to look for the presence or absence of declarations on year 2000 progress. Health & Safety and Environmental Protection Agencies will withdraw licenses from companies that have incidents related to failures in control systems. (They can't be called "accidents" as they are foreseeable, testable, and therefore preventable). If you have service agreements such as JIT (Just-In-Time) deliveries and fail to meet them, you could be sued for breach of contract and damages.
A study (a copy of the report is available from Enterprise Ireland) of six small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) in Ireland with no IT staff showed costs ranging from £4,000 for a package upgrade for the euro to £70,000 for complete replacement of an old system. The average is roughly £500 to £1000 per user.
If you have IT staff, be sure they have joined the Irish Computer Society (ICS), which has set up a special interest group (SIG) to assist its members in coping with the Year 2000 (Y2K) issue. Further information may be obtained from the Administrator of the ICS, Tel. 01-667 0599, Fax 667 3159, email info@ics.ie. Web page: http://www.ics.ie
If you do not have IT staff, be sure to attend one of the Year 2000 briefings given by the ICS Y2K SIG to Chambers of Commerce and County Enterprise Boards; ask your local organisers to contact the ICS to arrange it. Leading companies can demonstrate social responsibility by providing mentors to meet with groups of SMEs regularly to assist in their planning.
Enterprise Ireland have a free information pack, telephone 1850 57 2000. They plan to make country-wide presentations. Their web site is http://www.enterprise-ireland.com
The author's web site is http://www.sysmod.com
The definitive site for Year 2000 issues is YEAR2000.COM run by Peter de Jager. In the UK, see http://www.compinfo.co.uk
An excellent non-technical guide for directors and managers is the book "A business guide to the year 2000" (Craig & Kusmirak) Price in Ireland £9.00 or £9.90 including P&P from Systems Modelling Ltd. (Fax 055-22297). This is recommended by the CSSA and DTI in the UK. There is also a Survival Pack including the book at £38.00+ 21% VAT containing 12 sample letters, technical hints & tips, inventory forms, a diskette with a PC clock tester, a PowerPoint presentation and document files. A Tools & Resources CD at £59.00+ 21% VAT is suitable for IT people.
A 90 minute video by Esperanza productions aimed at small businesses is available
at £19.99+VAT; available from Viking Direct freefone 1800 709 004
This is not something you can delegate to your software suppliers. Your business survival is at stake. A Year 2000 project has the following phases; how big they are in your business is determined by your dependency on computer applications. The more specialised they are, the more you are at risk. The figures in brackets are, at this stage (early 1999!), the number of weeks you have left to do this.
This is too important to be left to the computer people. Technical people get interested in new, exciting technology. But this is not exciting; it is dull, painstaking work, and the only benefit is that you get to stay in business. As a business owner, director, or manager, you must sustain the commitment and focus on the important issues. Prioritise the business functions and their support systems ruthlessly; otherwise political and "patch" issues will dominate the negotiations.
Beware the business risks of errors within systems, and incompatibilities
between systems and with third parties including suppliers, customers and
all other organisations with whom data is exchanged. Even the ongoing viability
of key suppliers must be established with confidence. Remember, everyone
is finding the job to be far bigger and more difficult than they expected.
Now look for new business opportunities, and tackle the euro single currency
knowing your company's systems are fundamentally sound and will support you
and those who depend on you.
This seems so small an issue, but it is central to the whole problem facing
the IT industry. It is as if all 1-inch screws in the country had to be changed
to 2-cm screws, simultaneously, without loss of continuity of operations.
And the penalty for not doing so is that the piece of equipment held together
by those screws either stopped working altogether, or developed faults that
ranged from the inconvenient, through expensive work-arounds, to life threatening
failures. Not only is it the biggest IT project ever, it is also the most
embarrassing to admit to for IT managers and the most boring to work on for
technical staff. Nobody wants it, so most are in denial, fearing that it
threatens their jobs. Computer people are captivated by exciting new technology
and turn a blind eye to old problems.
If one file is changed, all programs using that file must change, and there
could be thousands of files and millions of lines of code to check. It's
an all-or-nothing change that must be put in place once, permanently, and
on time. The Jan 2000 deadline is one that cannot move. There is not even
the usual fallback of being able to use the old system while the new one
is being fixed. Once Jan 2000 arrives, the old two-digit-date software just
does not work anymore. We cannot say, as of other problems, "If it
costs too much, we won't do it." It's like nothing else the IT industry has
ever done. In Europe, we think the Euro integration problem is the second
biggest IT job we have ever done. The computer industry's record is of not
having things done on time: 80% of projects are late according to the University
of Sheffield, similar to U.S. findings. So we are tackling the biggest and
the second biggest problems ever - at the same time.
Sorry, it's a data problem - the use of two digits to represent a year. And
that applies irrespective of the kind of computer you have. Much business
PC software was written by programmers who didn't look ahead to the year
2000. There are computers in factories, laboratory and medical life-support
monitoring and control equipment, telephone exchanges, cars ... A computer
glitch at the New Zealand Tiwai Point aluminium smelter at midnight on New
Year's Eve 1996 has left a repair bill of more than $NZ 1 million. The failure
was traced to faulty software, which failed to account for 1996 being a leap
year. The Belgian Bourse (Stock Exchange) trading system crashed in Dec 1996
due to the New Year date change and trading was halted for three hours until
the problem could be fixed.
Patrick O'Beirne provides consultancy on Year 2000 issues for the desktop
and euro conversion of business systems. He may be contacted at
Systems Modelling Ltd., Tel. 055-22294 email
pobeirne@sysmod.com