RE: Remember Y2K?

midrange-nontech-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>What to do when Y2K causes society to breakdown
>
>By Shannon O'Donnell

Hey, I _still_ haven't figured out what happened. There're still apps that I 
_know_ were never fixed. (I was employed elsewhere by the time Y2K hit partly 
because there was no approval to get fixes done. I stayed in contact with users 
and various IS personnel though, so I had regular updates.)

But essentially _nothing_ happened in any area that I was associated with. And 
I cannot believe that my situation was so unique; it must have been repeated 
elsewhere. In my case, it was a significant government organization.

Man, were we really that thorough? ("we" -- IT & IS the world over, with so few 
glitches)

Or are there hidden logic traps that just haven't become visible to the public 
yet?

I recall a project for a municipal government almost 20 years ago where I 
rewrote the system for billing Local Improvement District property owners for 
various public works projects in neighborhoods. One major glitch in reconciling 
the old LID monthly process with the new process during parallel test runs was 
the discovery of one LID that had _never been billed_ to the property owners 
during its lifetime to that point -- well over 10 years.

I wasn't involved in any of whatever meetings that City officials went through 
in resolving it, but it must have been a mess explaining how it could have ever 
happened. (I suspect some auditor someplace got chewed at least.) I don't know 
when it would have been discovered if the new system hadn't been running 
parallel tests.

The ramifications of the system I mentioned at the beginning of this go as far 
as improperly checking criminal records for teaching applicants -- potential 
child molestation by teachers can put government agencies at a pretty high 
liability; but _when_ would a problem appear?

Then again, pretty much all has been quiet. Not absolutely, but overall? Y2K 
was a non-event.

Wow. I'm still amazed.

Tom Liotta