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I'm waiting for the pollies who hang on my every word, the ones that cite a burp or sneeze I made a year or more ago and who drag the WRP archives and deja news for my comments, quote a few snippits out of context, and crow, "Wrong Again!", to report my way out on the limb commentary on Social Security.
Social Security started ten years ago. They've been lauded up and down for being early, planning and executing the remediation, and praised on TV, the printed press, over an over for being Y2K A+, verified
compliant.
In the face of all this, I've consistently written that they weren't done. That I've had insider, geek-vine reports that Social Security was still working on Y2K and that there was a disconnect between the word from the trenches and the clueless yip-yap from the talking heads.
I've maintained that there would be Y2K failures at Social Security, probably not show stoppers but problems and failures none the less.
I based this on insider info, whispered words from geeks who are still cranking code at Social Security, and 30 years of knowing how complex enterprise systems respond to unusual conditions.
Now we have a series of interesting events, 1) the GAO, the pit bulls of the government, are tearing at Social Security on Y2K mis-statements, 2) Social Security's Y2K Tsarina retires 4 months before the big, write your own ticket to the presidential ball, party, 3) A public failure, your benefits expire in 1900, makes the Worshington Post.
Did I mention that "Banks Get it"? That Y2K is just hype, that there's no JAE, that any failure will be fixed in, oh, 2 or 3 hours?
We still have 4 months to run and odd stuff is happening; SAP, the wonder-dog, is blowing up left and right, Kreskin is reporting pre-Y2K failures that aren't getting fixed, IBM, SUN computers, and Silicon Graphics are issuing operating system patches; Frank is billing $150K/year to do COBOL (He's worth it but still, COBOL?).
On Sat, 4 Sep 1999 18:07:09, "Robert F" <robertf@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> Art Frank <Artfrank@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
> news:7qrl5f$33s@dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com...
> > The Glitch That Just Wouldn't Die
> > Social Security Learns It Isn't So Y2K-Compliant After All
> >
> > Washington Post
> > Saturday, September 4, 1999
> >
> > Late last year, President Clinton praised the Social Security
> Administration
> > for fixing its basic year 2000 computer problems ahead of schedule.
> > Yesterday, the agency acknowledged sending out letters last month to more
> > than 32,000 people bearing the news that certain benefits would end on
> Jan.
> > 1, 1900.
>
> These geniuses began their Y2k remediation 10 years ago. I'm still waiting
> for someone to tell my why I should believe the "we're ready" claims from
> the other big organizations, most of which started in 1996/1997 or later.
>
> Robert Folsom
Yoo-hoo pollies. You really need to answer RobertF's question. And when you do, consider that this problem, as defined by the Post is external, visible on paper, does not require file dumping and hex printing to find. There is nothing subtle about this problem, it's like the credit card expiration date problem in that it shows itself to lots of people before Y2K.
The subtle problems, losing 2% of the data each processing cycle, expiring records a few weeks early, those are *very* hard to find. The companies in denial don't have to cover them up. They may not have realized that the problems exist yet.
Maybe as several people have said, I'm overly optimistic.
cory hamasaki http://www.kiyoinc.com/current.html
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