Y2K: What is the State of the States?

By Howard Morrison The reality of Year 2000 is bearing down on everyone, including the states. So what state are they in?

Generally, the states have made good progress toward what is termed Y2K compliance. But the picture is spotty among the states and within each state. The majority of states have a done a relatively good job of creating an inventory of their Y2K problems and are well into the traditional remediation, or fixing, process. But there are some surprises _ New York, for instance, still has to fix the majority of its systems, while the District of Columbia has hardly started.

But there are still several problems that states, like their private sector and federal counterparts, have yet to fully address. While most agencies in many states have done a reasonable job on Y2K, there are a few agencies in many states that lag behind. The interface between agencies is sometimes critical and the fact that only a few state agencies are still relatively unprepared can have a devastating impact on the others.

Then there are a host of areas that almost everybody has overlooked. Most larger institutions, states among them, have been working on ensuring that their systems work for months or years and are proud of their achievements. But how perfect are these? Research shows that institutions who think their systems are fully remediated have, on average, caught only 92 percent of the problem. That eight percent might not be critical, or it could be the factor that brings whole systems down. This makes testing by an outside third party that has not been involved in the general remediation critical.

There are four issues, in addition to adequate testing, that we consider critical:

1) Embedded chips. There are millions of electronic controls and machines in every state, in every large manufacturing company and throughout our public infrastructure. They are found in airports, they control traffic, elevators and the heating and ventilation systems in state buildings. They are also critical throughout our medical system, where they are found in a myriad of life support systems, for instance. Seemingly little attention has been paid to this problem yet.

2) Contingency planning. In our opinion it is very unlikely that most of the Doomsday pronouncements will actually happen. But there will be serious disruptions in some localities and in some agencies and businesses. Contingency planning audits that allow states to have a fallback plan are essential to insure the continuation of mission-critical services and functions.

3) Source recovery. Many larger computer systems started their lives in the 1960s and early `70s. Their languages are no longer in use, the original programmers are long retired and in some cases institutions do not know they even have this problem. Technology now exists whereby that early source code can be reconstructed remotely.

4) Emergency fixes. What happens at this late stage if an agency
or institution has not yet done any remediation, or what they have done proves to have not worked and it is now April 1999? Are there any options?

There are approaches which, although not a total solution to Y2K problems, will at least provide several years of "breathing space." One such system is phase shifting, which buys you 28 years in which to permanently fix your problem using a special software which "fools" the information in your computer into believing it is 28 years later than it is.

Howard Morrison, a 30-year computer industry veteran, is a partner with Center 2000 Inc., a consortium of 16 Y2K specialist companies that provide Y2K consulting and remediation. For more information, visit their website at www.center2k.com.