I'm confused. Maybe my calculator already has the Y2K bug. It doesn't seem to work the same way as the government's calculators. Any math wizards out there that might be able to straighten this out?

This report says that as of August 13 there were 217 systems not yet ready, but 97% were fixed. So given the possibility of "rounding" the percentages, this means that the total number of systems they're talking about has to be a minimum of 6200.

"97% ready!"

This other report for period ended August 15 (2 days later) says that the Defense Department systems account for 37% of all mission-critical systems, which based on the total of 6200, would come to about 2294 systems.

This same report says that only 89% of Defense Department systems are fixed, which would leave about 252 not yet ready.

252 not 169?

So why does the first report say that the Defense Department, as of June 30 (over 2 weeks earlier) only had 169 systems that were not ready?

If it is really 252 as Representative Stephen Horn indicates on his most recent report card, and you add the 48 from other departments (which could also be higher in reality?) you get at least 300, or 5% not fixed, meaning that the government is really only 95% fixed, not 97%.

Am I doing something wrong here, is my calculator broken, or is someone lying to us again? At the risk of looking like an idiot (I could be figuring something wrong!) I would like to get to the bottom of this. Help!

-- @ (@@@.@), September 19, 1999

Answers

@,

Don't you worry about your calculator, as far as the gubmint is concerned, you already ARE at the bottom of this.!!!!

-- lookin up (bottom barrel@dark.com), September 19, 1999.

I have difficulty following the numbers, too.

One person explained this percentage as a point of view: For instance, if you have a flat tire being repaired, the project is 75% done without doing anything, because three tires are already working fine. You call the shop and the mechanic says, "We're 75% done with it." You think, "Great; they are probably tightening the lug nuts right now." Oops.

Would they be using that kind of math on us? Surely not. But then it all depends on what the meaning of "is" is.

keepin' on.

gene

-- gene (ekbaker@essex1.com), September 19, 1999.

Lookin up,

Yes, I am all too painfully aware of that fact. But they printed this all over the headlines last Tuesday. I think the American people have a right to know the truth. We should hammer the media with calls until they investigate this and print a correction on the front page!

-- @ (@@@.@), September 19, 1999.

Well, when you start mixing percents from different reports almost anything could go wrong. Some of these are probably only estimates anyway, like the DD 37%, which if slightly inaccurate throws off the whole exercise.

95% or 97%, both numbers are equally suspect. Most aren't really finished and tested, just self reported. Like the place where I work. We're finished if you count the 3rd party software upgrades which havn't arrived yet. But according to the PR Dept. we're done!

And what about all those "non-mission critical" programs? Are they really not important? Are they still connected to mission critical computers, waiting to give them bad data?

Are we just going to do all the non-mission critical work by hand?

Inquiring Minds Want to Know.

-- LM (latemarch@usa.net), September 19, 1999.

ppssssttt, it's too late to try to figure the .gov .system. establishment spin out.

No time left to scratch head -- just prepare!

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), September 19, 1999.

You forgot to allow for inflation.

-- A. Hambley (a.hambley@usa.net), September 19, 1999.

A. Hambley,

LOL!! Yeah, maybe they should get Greenscum to try to explain this one!

Seriously though, I wonder if USA Today would be willing to check this one out. Last November they were not afraid to print that the Pentagon falsified records, as a FRONT PAGE HEADLINE!

Pentagon lied

-- @ (@@@.@), September 19, 1999.

Non mission critical???ROTFLMAO!

Do you REALLY believe that they will now spend TEN TIMES more to fix what they have deemed 'non mission critical' systems?? I feel sorry for those employees whose JOBS revolved around those systems. Those systems will simply be turned off!

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@ It's ALL going away in January.com), September 19, 1999.

K, good point. Maybe if we could get a major media outlet to post the percentage of government tits as a whole that are about to go dry it might get some attention.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), September 19, 1999.

Nikoli,

Excellent idea! That's an issue that has been overlooked for the most part because of all this emphasis on "mission-critical". Let's use reverse psychology. If they only want to talk about mission-critical then let's put the emphasis on everything that isn't mission critical - an awful lot!

-- @ (@@@.@), September 19, 1999.

OH HELL! I just discovered something. All of my math calculations only go to prove what was stated right in front of my face in Stephen Horn's report:

"Overall, the government improved its year 2000 compliance by only 1 percent; 5 percent of the systems most critical to the government's mission are still not ready, Horn said."

And then 4 days later the O.M.B. says that it's only 3%! Quite an improvement considering the info in Horn's report is from a period ending 2 days after the period of the O.M.B. report. That's just a flat-out lie and needs to be brought to everyone's attention.

-- @ (@@@.@), September 19, 1999.

@@@, another posibility - I really think that the usual gov't ineptness will allow for a 2% descrepancy, I wouldn't deem it an outright lie until it reached at least 5%....;)

Regards,

-- FactFinder (FactFinder@bzn.com), September 19, 1999.

Fact Finder,

Wait a minute - rounding up to the next highest percent is one thing, but when Horn clearly stated "5% not ready" then I think the honest thing to do is to round to the 95%. There's no excuse for that! Anyone who truly understands the nature of Y2K knows that 2% can make a huge difference. Even Greenspan said so!

-- @ (@@@.@), September 19, 1999.

Don't make them count the systems again. Will take them weeks and millions of dollars that could be used for, ummm, well, oh yea, "Road Closed due to Martial Law" signs, or "this computer really is Y2K Ready but will be down for it's 100 year servicing for the next 6 months" stickers.

-- Bill (bill@tinfoil.com), September 19, 1999.

Someone has posted this on another thread:

"GOVERNMENT NEWS
GCN June 15, 1998

Navy official: Date code failure rate must be nil
By Gregory Slabodkin GCN Staff

Even if 99 percent of the Navys systems are ready for 2000, the service likely will experience severe service hiccups, said Vice Adm. Arthur Cebrowski, the Navys director of space, information warfare, command and control.

A failure rate of just 1 percent may be enough to significantly hamper Navy operations, Cebrowski said this month at the GCN Forum luncheon in Washington.

"Clearly, 1 percent is not satisfactory," he said."[snip]

Full article in this thread:

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=001Q s1

-- Chris (#$%^&@pond.com), September 19, 1999.

Well, if we're into the rounding thing why not round it up to 100% and call it good!

-- ..- (dit@dot.dash), September 20, 1999.

We as a group dislike the government and consider it essentially useless and even parasitic, yet we are very concerned that some of its self-designated "critical" system might malfunction. Fedgov systems may live or may die - so what ?

-- Count Vronsky (vronsky@anna.com), September 20, 1999.

You missed a bigger error: you assuming they even KNOW how many CRITICAL SYSTEMS are present, you're assuming they know exactly how many of these mission critical systems are actually fixed, and you're assuming that the "self-reported" data from all these agencies is itself 100% coorect.

Further, you're assuming that all these FEDERAL government computer systems are NOT dependent on any non-critical mission systems,

AND that all FEDERAL non-critical mission systems will actually work (or that all federal non-compliant, non-mission-critical systems are actually "not needed" in order that the governments business can get done without disruptions and delays and hardship to businesses and individuals,

AND that the local and state mission-critical are actually remedaited and can actually still communicate 100% correctly and accurately with the remediated AND unremediated federal computer systems,

AND that the non-mission-critical local and state and corporate (health care, tax, finance, insurance and payroll) computer systems are actually ALL remediated or are ACTUALLY NOT NEEDED or can still properly communicate with the remediated and unremediated federal, state and local computers......

AND that the they (federal, state and local) authorities have not arbitrarily "moved" non-compliant systems from one list to another simply to improve the count reported to higher-ups. For example, the Air Force's (DOD) payroll system was earlier this year not included in a mission-critical system list, and so it could not be remediated according to the "rules" and priorities inplace at that time (Janu-feb, 1999) (This erro was corrected, the payroll system was moved to a "critical" list, and so it could be remediated.)

So, if a payroll system is not considered mission critical - even though it is 100% date sensitive and people will not work for no pay - how many others are in the wrong list, and so not remediated? How many non-mission critical systems are waiting like a time bomb to undermine otherwise correct systems?

The actual original count of systems was APPROXIMATELY 76,000. The original mission critical list was 9500 or 11%. How many of these 89% are actually required? How many have been fixed, or at least remain useable? If approximately 6000 systems are now considered mission-critical, what happened to the 3000 moved from the original list?

NOTE: the first list from a computer user is accruate, amd the first schedule from a computer programmer is usually "about right" - ALL follow-on lists and schedules are always politically or bureacractically changed to improve the performance once the management team gets involved ....

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), September 20, 1999.