Y2k Ain't Over Till It's Over

September 27, 1999
Behind the News:
Y2K Ain't Over Till It's Over

Please Note: This article first appeared in InformationWeek, September 27, 1999, pg. 492.

It's good that so much Y2K work has been accomplished. It's also good so much is still being done because there are still many grave Y2K risks to be managed. The "everything's perfect" spin from government and industry has quelled the effect of the extremists from the "all is lost" crowd. But two wrongs don't make a right, and Y2K-preparedness efforts have sadly waned.
Preventing panic is a worthy goal, but unrealistic expectations and public complacency are not the proper price. Even in the United States, we have serious safety issues regarding nuclear power, water treatment, and, especially, chemical processing.
But this is not the time for any agenda other than one that deals with the immediate problems. Extreme positions aren't beneficial to the task at hand: controlling the risks of greatest consequence. Many of these complex systems are not easily shut down and restarted. At this point, that largely means contingency planning.
Here's some recommendations that I give my clients. They're realistic and based on lessons learned and best practices:

Prioritize and focus on your highest-consequence Y2K risks. Bring all stakeholders together to ensure a big-picture agenda.

Fix and test whatever you can, including contingency plans. Don't overlook things such as program defaults and backup power. The bigger the consequences, the more thoroughly you should test.

Plan for contingencies. With chemical manufacturing, nuclear power, and other process-control situations that often already have reasonably good contingency and emergency response in place, that may mean additional measures such as those that follow. If you don't already have good emergency processes and procedures in place, you'll need to do that, too.

Develop and practice scenarios that demonstrate how Y2K is potentially different. Consider things such as multiplicity of events, internal and external risks, simultaneous disruptions, geographic dispersion, ripple effects, and an extended time frame.

Turn down the speed and/or volume of the processes for a few days around the new year to make things more manageable.

Put additional teams in place for technical, safety, and emergency response. Many disasters in process-control situations are a combination of human errors during multiple technical problems.

Place people downstream where things can be physically monitored and managed if necessary. This would have caught June's sewage spill in Los Angeles; instead, it went on for several hours, dumping 4 million gallons into a park before someone noticed.

Increase monitoring procedures instead of just relying on automated monitoring equipment. For example, a water-treatment facility may decide to physically test drinking water every 20 minutes.

Beware of electric power quality. Fluctuations can be even more troublesome than outages because some equipment is more sensitive to damage and failure from fluctuations than from blackouts.

Big users should work with their power companies if they plan a complete or partial shutdown. Such changes in demand for electric power can also cause problems on the grid.

Unlike banks and brokerages, there's no Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. or Securities and Exchange Commission on duty at the federal level for Y2K water or chemical safety. But almost every city has emergency managers who can help ensure your community safely enters the new year. Tools and guidance are available at http://www.oes.ca.gov
Y2K was a ludicrous blunder. Even worse, we're still creating more of the problem today. I propose we focus our energies first on managing the immediate risks and then on preventing this kind of absurd waste in the future. Let's not give anybody the opportunity to waste our time like this again.

Leon A. Kappelman is associate director of the Center for Quality and Productivity at the University of North Texas and co-chairman of the Society for Information Management's Year 2000 Working Group. Reach him at kapp@unt.edu.