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Managing the Y2K Date Change
Y2K turned from a real problem to a fiasco when the Rabid Religious Right came into the picture, about the same time the real programmers were finally fixing the problem. The hard work by thousands of programmers and change managers saved us from a real disaster, by their long hours and dedication. The vendors of Gold Coins, Survival Kits and books based on the prophesies contained in the Book of Revelations made their millions, and succeeded in keeping the drama and misinformation going right until midnight. During the period up to mid 1999 many of us traveled hundreds of thousands of miles, gave hundreds of briefings and presentations and convinced thousands of Banks and companies to move quickly to find and rectify their code. Yes there were many, many faulty programs found in Banks, financial institutions, insurance and government offices dealing with dates, especially birth dates and project dates. No we neither looked for, nor found Embedded Chips at the bottom of Oil Wells, or on the Moon with Elvis Presley, despite what many said. My involvement came around 1996 when I was introduced to the work being done by Peter de Jager. This often bad tempered South African, living in Canada has the tenacity to stick to his belief, and despite all the criticism lead the awareness movement for Y2K remediation. He created the awareness through the Internet, a radically new concept back then, and through presentations to anyone who would listen. I was a little skeptical that we would let ourselves get into such a predicament, and through working with the late John Westergaard in New York, met with Senator Patrick Monynihan. They were very interested in the subject and John prompted me to research Peter de Jager's position further. That started over three years of briefings, presentations, TV and Radio appearances joining the Call to Arms to get the code changed before midnight. This involved presentations to Banks, many corporations, Committees in the House of Representatives, and the US Senate, and regular meetings with key Senators and Congressmen, even visits to the White House. This web site was launched in 1996, having been on CompuServe before that. A weekly radio broadcast was undertaken on Business Radio in Washington, DC, and CNN had me for guest appearances every few days. Unpaid of course. The most interesting meetings were with the giant international banks, and investment companies, who needed a plan for action, and a blueprint for managing change. At first they did not believe the Y2K scenario, but some tried moving the date to midnight on the 31st December 1999 and watching what happened, often with unforeseen and costly consequences. Most saw paralysis of their systems, and that prompted them to introduce urgent measures to search and remediate code, or switch to new systems. The unintended consequence of this was to create the Indian lead in software. The scope of companies seeking guidance in change management stretched from Global Banks to the leading Utilities, from Defense Contractors to charities relying on old donated Cobol computers. There were major failures predicted in some defense computer systems, and this fear was shown to be correct after midnight when NSA and others went blank. None of the Banks, companies, organizations and government departments we advised had a single problem, as predicted in mid 1999. There were volumes of lessons learned and surprisingly many of the biggest and richest corporations were the worst prepared, and understood the issues least. Many government departments who should have known where every piece of critical infrastructure was at risk simply hadn't a clue. On Embedded Chips the Japanese Intelligence department knew where every fabrication machine was located, what were their outputs, how many they produced and where they were sold. The US Intelligence community knew where every Soviet tank was made, how many and what shells they could fire. The words "Intelligence Failure" came to mind back then. Many of the leading Banks had no "Plan B" for failure of critical infrastructure, and their communications and data networks. The same applied to Cities and States, and our argument with Mayor Rudy Giuliani over putting the Emergency Center high up in the World Trade Center instead of underground, out of town and even across the River in New Jersey proved to be valid on 9/11. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the damage to surrounding buildings and infrastructure prompted many companies to pull out the Y2K plans and adopt the back up procedures. These saved many companies from ruin. The desire to solve the Y2K problems, clean the code and ensure business continuity caused many companies and government departments to pull together. Sadly the media did not look at the hard work of legions of programmers and change managers to focus on the fraud and lack of drastic failures. The lessons learned in managing the change of Y2K will be with us for a long time. Unless of course we choose to ignore them and believe that nothing can ever go wrong.
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There has developed a mistaken belief that Y2K was a fraud, and that there really was no danger from the date change. Nothing could be further from the truth.