Jamaica Experience Shows Why Dire Y2K Predictions Went Wrong

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Tuesday, February 01, 2000

Jamaica Experience Shows Why Dire Y2K Predictions Went Wrong

KINGSTON, Jamaica

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran, The Washington Post

Back in August, Eric Dorman's to-do list would have made most computer programmers in the United States quail: He had promised to solve Y2K problems at 25 businesses in just four months on this tropical island.

It appeared to be too much work to finish before Dec. 31. After all, the Gartner Group, a prominent U.S. technology consulting firm, had predicted early last year that half of Jamaica's businesses and government agencies would suffer at least one serious computer failure. The World Bank declared that the country had only a "medium awareness" of Y2K issues. Even Jamaica's commerce and technology minister had cautioned that the country was not on course to finish its year 2000 fixes until 2004.

Yet when Jan. 1 rolled around, Dorman's companies were all functioning fine, thanks to the coattails he rode. "The Americans thought that we would never finish the job in time," he boasted. "But we proved them wrong-by using a lot of their technology."

Dorman's decision to adopt the fixes developed by American and European companies, a strategy that was shared by many others on the front lines of the Y2K fight here, helps to explain why this and other developing nations entered the new year with nary an electronic hitch. That achievement initially confounded and even chagrined computer experts who had predicted widespread disruptions in such countries.

When Dorman began to analyze the systems in his windowless office, the young computer technician discovered he did not have to revise and test millions of lines of programming code. Most of his clients relied on mass-produced software, and making them Y2K compliant, he concluded, would simply involve installing new versions of widely available programs from the United States and Western Europe.

"We didn't have to invent the wheel ourselves," said Herman Athias, a former AT&T Corp. engineer who now owns a computer consulting firm here. "We learned how to do the work much faster from countries that were much farther ahead of us."

Businesses here depended on programming "patches" developed by American firms. They used European software that automatically repaired computer code. They saved time by not testing elevators, certain medical devices and other equipment already found to be compliant by U.S. organizations. And, like Dorman, they found many systems could be fixed with new, off-the-shelf software.

"Dealing with Y2K wasn't at all difficult," said Dorman, who wrapped up his work by mid-December. "It was actually rather easy."

In fact, the only real suffering Jamaica underwent as a result of a Y2K glitch was a costly drop in tourism. Because of the uncertainty about Jamaica's Y2K readiness, hotel bookings for the normally packed New Year's weekend were between 10 percent and 40 percent lower than the previous year throughout the island, said Stuart Fisher of SuperClubs, which runs 10 resorts in Jamaica. "The perception that there would be problems was the biggest problem for us," he said.

As in many developing nations, most businesses and government agencies on this Caribbean island of 2.6 million people did not begin to test and fix their computer systems actively until early 1999, more than a year after large firms in the United States and Western Europe commenced their Y2K projects.

"When we first got serious about this issue, we thought it was far too late to fix all of our systems," said Camella Rhone, who coordinated Y2K preparations nationwide. "But we eventually realized that starting late didn't mean we wouldn't cross the finish line in time."

Instead of painstakingly testing medical devices as most American hospital chains did, for instance, by the time Jamaican hospitals got around to the task, the devices' manufacturers and international health care consortia had posted testing information on their Web sites. "We saved a lot of time by just going to the Internet," said Sylvia Brown, a senior manager at the Kingston office of consulting firm KPMG Peat Marwick.

International consultants and the U.S. government also lent advice. Worried that its mobile radio system might not be compliant, the Airports Authority of Jamaica checked with a visiting official from the International Air Transport Association.

"I asked them, 'What do you think of these,' " said Suzanne Grant, the authority's Y2K administrator. "They said, 'Don't worry. Somebody in another country already tested the system and it's just fine.' "

Jamaican officials acknowledged that the initial reports from their country were not encouraging. In a February 1998 survey, 160 of 200 government agencies had not yet drawn up plans to make date-related fixes, even though computers are central to many important public sector functions, from tax collection to police operations. The government also was facing an immediate repair bill of $25 million, which amounted to about 1 percent of its annual budget. (By contrast, the U.S. government has estimated that its Y2K price tag will total $8.38 billion, or less than one-half of 1 percent of its annual budget, but the cost has been spread over several years.)

"There was no budget for it," said Luke Jackson, who directed the Jamaican government's Y2K project.

While the government appealed to the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank for funding, Jackson and other officials decide to perform triage on their computer systems and focus only on five crucial areas: financial services, national security, transportation, health care and utilities.

"We had to have priorities," he said. "Our resources couldn't cover all areas."

At the Jamaica Public Service Co., the island's sole electric power provider, executives determined that 75 personal computers probably would need to be fixed or replaced, but since they were not in areas of the business deemed critical to delivering electricity, they would be "fixed on failure."

Thus far, the utility has replaced 30 of the machines.

Government officials and business leaders also drew up elaborate contingency plans to cope with power outages, inoperable telephones and dry faucets. Giant oil tanks were filled with a two-week supply of gasoline. Backup radios were purchased for the police. Bottled water was stockpiled.

But Jackson places the blame for the inaccurate forecasts squarely with technology specialists in the United States. "All those people making predictions," he scoffed, "they never even called us."

-- (Lessons@learn.ed), August 02, 2000

Answers

In my opinion, Andy Ray should not be able to use the "vindicated regards" phrase anymore. In the interests of truth and justice, I should own that phrase.

I wrote at length, several months ago, about how apparently use of packaged software, and installing the fixes provided by American and European countries, had saved the day in developing nations. I used what I had heard about Nigeria as an example. What I got in response was a lot of idiotic shit. Such as "those countries did next to nothing, and doesn't that show how we could have fixed on failure." Or "those countries really don't depend on computers all that much.." (Think banks, for God's sake.)

I am going to make particular unfond reference to Flint, who came up with such nuggets as "Well, I just can't believe that any of these countries successfully completed a remediation program." (Note to Cherri: That's a paraphrase, so don't come flying out of the woodwork accusing me of being a liar.)

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), August 02, 2000.


http://partners.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/01/biztech/articles/09year .html?AltaVistaRefId=LmY_WEFnnnnuntly

January 8, 2000

Experts Puzzled by Scarcity of Y2K Failures

By BARNABY J. FEDER

Whether it is with scorn, anger or resignation, most computer experts and Year 2000 program managers brush off suggestions that they overreacted to the Y2K threat, taken in by computer companies and consultants positioned to profit from fear.

Still, like the skeptics, many wonder: How did countries that started so late -- and appeared to do so little -- manage to enter 2000 as smoothly as nations like the United States and Britain that got an early jump?

"That question is plaguing all of us, although some people won't admit it," said Maggie Parent, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter's representative to Global 2000, an international banking group formed to coordinate and stimulate Year 2000 work. "We expected there to be some significant blowouts."

A World Bank survey published last January concluded that just 54 of 139 developing countries had national Year 2000 programs outlined and only 21 were actually taking concrete steps to prepare.

Japan, China, Italy and Venezuela showed up as high-profile question marks in various studies. Paraguay's Year 2000 coordinator was quoted last summer saying the country would experience so many disruptions its government would have to impose martial law. Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova were seen as so risky that the State Department issued travel advisories in November and called nonessential personnel home over New Year's.

So what accounts for the surprisingly quiet rollover? Computer experts cite several factors. Even they may have underestimated how hard many countries worked in the last few months, when the problems were better understood, and how much help came from others that started early. And in many cases, assessments of overseas readiness were based on scarce or vague data.

But the simplest if most embarrassing explanation is that the some public and private analysts who testified before Congress and were widely quoted overestimated the world's dependence on computer technology. Most countries had much less to do to prepare because they are far less computerized than the United States. The computers they do have are much less likely to be tied together in complex systems and are often so old that they run much simpler software, according to Louis Marcoccio, Year 2000 research director for the Gartner Group, a technology consulting firm.

At a briefing last week on why Pentagon analysts overestimated the risks in many countries, Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre said, "If we had a failing, it may be that we extrapolated to the rest of the world the kind of business practices that we have developed here."

Once adjustments are made for technology dependence, some analysts say, the investment of the United States and other pacesetters in Year 2000 preparations was not that far out of line with those that started late. But the figures from many countries are so unreliable that it is hard to be sure. Russia, for example, is estimated to have spent anywhere from $200 million to $1 billion.

Mr. Marcoccio suspects the lower figures are closest to the truth but he adds that based on the government's estimate that the United States spent $100 billion, "If Russia spent $400 million, they spent proportionally more than the United States, because the United States is 300 times more reliant on computers."

Such assessments lead down a pathway that only a statistician could love. Use Gartner's estimate that the United States spent $150 billion to $225 billion, and the comparable Russia investment jumps to a minimum of $500 million. Tamper with Gartner's guess that the United States is 300 times as computer-dependent, and figures dance another direction.

But nearly everyone agrees that the figures for the United States include substantial sums toward preparations abroad by American multinationals. Motorola said its $225 million Year 2000 budget included not just repairs at its overseas factories but, for example, helping its Asian suppliers pinpoint potential Year 2000 flaws. It also paid overtime for support that helped paging and radio networks in Italy function flawlessly over New Year's.

The federal government picked up part of the tab for foreign nations. To jump-start lagging nations, the government paid for many of them to send representatives to the first United Nations meeting on Year 2000 in late 1998. It distributed hundreds of thousands of CD's in 10 languages providing background and suggestions for how to organize Year 2000 projects. More recently, the Defense Department provided $8 million to set up a joint observation post in Colorado as insurance against miscommunication that could lead to missiles' being launched.

"We got a lot of free consulting from the United States and agencies like the Inter-American Development Bank," said Rodrigo Martin, a Chilean who headed a regional Year 2000 committee in South America.

Such aid played a bigger role in helping late starters to catch up than most people realize, some computer experts say. As John Koskinen, chairman of the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion, sees it, hype about the magnitude of the problem misled fewer people than hype about the impossibility of getting it fixed.

"This was a process that could move faster than the preparedness surveys," Mr. Koskinen said, noting that alarming press releases and testimony frequently relied on research that was obsolete within weeks.

Del Clark, who led the Year 2000 program at Phillips Petroleum, concurred, saying: "China was the big question mark for us. Part of what happened was that they were working hard late in 1999 and the status information was out of date."

It helped that repair efforts became less expensive toward the end because of the experience gained by those who did the work early and the tools developed for them, according to Brian Robbins, senior vice president in charge of the Year 2000 project at Chase. In addition, Mr. Robbins said, it turned out that some countries like Italy had done more work than reported.

By 1998, the pacesetters were far enough along for a sense to develop that others were lagging, and fears about the consequences began building. There were extenuating circumstances in some cases, like the economic slump in Asia, and many realized the problems would not be as daunting as in the United States. But with time short, industry groups like Global 2000 and a few countries began trying a variety of tactics to accelerate Year 2000 preparations.

"People outside of information technology don't realize how incredibly mobilized the world became," Ms. Parent said.

Still, many of those most familiar with the relative preparedness and spending levels in many foreign countries wonder whether it will be possible to figure out why things ended up going so smoothly.

Information was always hard to come by and hard to compare since sources varied so widely in what costs they attributed to Year 2000 work. In general, foreign countries have not included labor costs in their Year 2000 figures while the United States and Britain have, but practices have varied widely.

Now that Year 2000 has arrived, the pressure to sort out such data is disappearing rapidly.

Still, questions about the transition will not go away. What actually happened might figure in insurance lawsuits because if courts were to decide insurers were liable for the money companies spent to avoid problems, the insurers would undoubtedly cite the success of laggards and low spenders as a sign that budgets for American companies were needlessly bloated.

More broadly though, comparing preparations and the results achieved may shed valuable light on cultural differences in how technology is set up and managed, according to Edward Tenner, author of "Why Things Bite Back." That in turn could help society deal with problems like global warming and the proper use of biotechnology. "We really need to look at the sociology of computing in detail," he said.

-- another piece (of@the.puzzle), August 02, 2000.


Peter,

Correct me if I'm wrong. Your biggest y2k concern if memory serves had been 'hot money' and how the world's economy could have been affected if investors had decided to suddenly pull their money out of developing nations at the same time, right?

I can see your interest in this topic. It's a good thing Jamaica and others were able to get the critical work done in less than a year, rather than the two or three years it took many U.S. organizations to become ready.

-- I remember the Asian economic (crisis@of.1997-98), August 02, 2000.


And for the Morons who still say that Y2k Fear "didn't cost anything":

"Dealing with Y2K wasn't at all difficult," said Dorman, who wrapped up his work by mid-December. "It was actually rather easy."

In fact, the only real suffering Jamaica underwent as a result of a Y2K glitch was a costly drop in tourism. Because of the uncertainty about Jamaica's Y2K readiness, hotel bookings for the normally packed New Year's weekend were between 10 percent and 40 percent lower than the previous year throughout the island, said Stuart Fisher of SuperClubs, which runs 10 resorts in Jamaica. "The perception that there would be problems was the biggest problem for us," he said.

LINK

http://www.courierpress.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi? 200002/01+jamaicay2k020100_business.html+20000201

-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), August 02, 2000.


To "I remember the Asian economic crisis":

Well, I do too, and it has influenced me ever since. Because it was my belief that the world narrowly averted economic catastrophe in 97-98 (I don't like Clinton, but Rubin and Summers were magnificent), Asia was part of a question that I posted repeatedly on the old TB2000. The question basically said "OK a lot of good news on Y2K but what about (1) Asia (2) Small & Medium Enterprises, and (3) state and local governments?"

Although hoping for good news on the limping tigers, all I got (mainly from Reuters) was frightening.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), August 02, 2000.



Cpr,

You may want to fault the Gartner Group for its prediction or estimate...

After all, the Gartner Group, a prominent U.S. technology consulting firm, had predicted early last year that half of Jamaica's businesses and government agencies would suffer at least one serious computer failure.

...but keep in mind that Jamaica did not really start working on y2k until early 1999!

As in many developing nations, most businesses and government agencies on this Caribbean island of 2.6 million people did not begin to test and fix their computer systems actively until early 1999, more than a year after large firms in the United States and Western Europe commenced their Y2K projects.

-- The (concerns@were.understandable), August 02, 2000.


HorseShit Cubed. If you check back on all of Gartner, Giga's and some of the others not to mention Yourdon, you will see that EVERY LAST ONE OF THEIR **ESTIMATES** were **OVERSTATED** BY A MIN OF 100%. Gartner came out with the famous $300-600 B. Problem for the US alone. Now the state $300 Bill. World Wide!!

EVERY LAST ESTIMATE. AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT IS CALLED WHEN SUCH OVER-ESTIMATES ARE MADE??

HYPE


Then GAREEEEEE and the SCARY BOYS/GIRLS took all those numbers and "stories" and HYPED IT EVEN MORE TO THE TECHNO-ILLITERATI.

IT WAS ...............HYPE...........THEN. AND IT IS BULL SHIT NOW.

-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), August 02, 2000.


I'm pretty sure that the original Gartner prediction of $600 billion was for world-wide.

Anyway, there was obvious cause for concern, and all of cpr's screaming and yelling won't change that.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), August 02, 2000.


Peter, Peter, Peter,

Accept the fact that your dreams and hopes of a catstrophic new year have long since been dashed, and that you have been relegated to the historically-proven incorrect.

There was never a reason to prepare, and the pollies who called it before the fact were (and remin) correct.

Vindicated Regards,
Andy Ray



-- Andy Ray (andyman633@hotmail.com), August 02, 2000.

Erring-Boy's favorite web page: LINK

See where the ErringBoy spends hour after hour improving his motor skills.

LINK http://greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=003hwv

-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), August 25, 2000.


cpr,

your continuous and scandalous references to morons will not go unpunished.

-- (laGuillotine@PC.Central), August 25, 2000.


Do they really have computers in Jamaica?

-- Puzzled (really@do.they?), August 26, 2000.

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