526 Days To Doomsday

JANUARY 1, 2000. You wake up to the dawn of a new century. Full of beans and raring to go, despite the late night partying. Only, the world seems eerily quiet. Your bedside clock stopped at midnight. The overhead fan is not whirring, nor the airconditioner humming. You pick up the phone, there's no dial tone. Frowning, you switch on the TV, there's snow on the screen, your desktop personal computer welcomes you with probably a scowl, the elevator in your building is stuck at basement, your car doesn't start. Worried sick, you hotfoot it to the bank to take out some emergency cash, the ATM swallows your card. But there's nothing to worry, you've just been credited a year's interest extra. Congratulations!

Doomsday scenario! Nostradamus unplugged! Science fic-tion! It could actually be reality check. On that fateful Saturday, 526 days from today (July 13), the world may come to an abrupt stop, fires may break out, criminals may be released from jails before time, trains may collide, airplanes may crash, why, even an involuntary nuclear war may be sparked off! And the responsibility for all this mayhem will fall on just two digits.

Rather, their absence in your harmless PC. And computer systems around the world. Even products and equipment with software instruments embedded onto chips. Welcome to the millennium bug or the Year 2000 problem—or simply, Y2K. Welcome to the day when the world will stand still. And man will finally realise his ultimate dependence on computers.

A few decades ago, when computer storage space was costly, programmers cut costs by condensing the century date to two digits. Thus 1960 became 60. So many computers, come January 1, 2000, will read the year as 00, which is 1900 really. For instance, even an electronic device with a timer—a watch with an embedded chip, say—will be dead. And, as the clockhands pause, computers will substitute 1900 in all their work and trigger failures/crashes/shutdowns. In air transport, train and airplane reservations, bank, insurance and credit card accounts, telecom systems, automobiles, emergency medicare equipment like pacemakers, and heart monitors, emergency services like police and fire, power distribution, billing and inventory control, other fuel supplies, stockmarkets and forex trading systems, and all electronic gadgets like microwave ovens, thermostats, programmable washing machines and TV/VCRs. Worse, mission critical control software—to monitor the controls to ensure nothing goes wrong with computers—are also at risk. And what happens when early warning systems cannot predict a leak in a nuclear plant?

Is disaster waiting to happen? Yes, it's imminent. And none of the computers, except Apple Macintoshes, are Y2K-compliant; they are just, as Microsoft and IBM put it, Y2K ready, and that's no guarantee. And when the rollover actually happens, the world would have spent $600 billion and more to minimise the effect of Y2K. Still, the saddest part of the story: few people are aware of the problem. Fewer still are doing anything about it. Least of all, in a developing, yet nuclear, country like India.

On February 4 this year, the US president signed an executive order to set up a commission to coordinate the Y2K repairs of the government. But Indian government and corpo-rates are still to wake up to the magnitude of the problem. Waiting perhaps for a miracle.

"Corporate India is not prepared enough to face the Y2K challenge. We, in our country, believe a lot in God. Even in this case, we are hoping for a divine intervention," moans Saurabh Srivastava, chairman of IIS Infotech, one of India's leading Y2K solution companies. Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL) chairman Keki Dadiseth said at a Y2K seminar in Delhi recently: "It (the Y2K problem) could cripple the country's banking, insurance, communication, transport networks and all industrial activities with even the smallest degree of computerisation and the government's revenue collection systems." Adds Rajiv Chandrashekhar, CMD, BPL Cellular Holdings: "I think India is underprepared. When systems at best are chaotic, the Y2K issue can create a whole lot of confusion."

 Have machines, then, got the better of man? The problems have already surfaced, touching daily life. Already, credit card companies have been facing problems with cards which expire in 2000 not being accepted at the ATMs because the expiry date shows '00'. Warns Dewang Mehta of Nasscom: "Just ensure that you are not flying or in a lift or doing anything to do with computers at the stroke of midnight when the next century arrives. Of course, you must have every documentary evidence of all your financial transactions and the latest copy of your bank statement in hand."

"The people who have the most to worry about are the ones with mainframes since rewriting the date codes there would be virtually impossible keeping the constraint of time in mind," says Stacy Plemmons, vice-president, Hewlett Packard. Regarding HP, he adds that anyone who is on HP's support services gets the Y2K services free.

PLEMMONS recalls that when he had joined HP in the 1970s, talk of such a problem had come up during a casual discussion while writing an inventory control package. Says he: "Those were the days when the five and quarter floppy (remember those thin, black floppies, double the size commonly used today) was in vogue. And disk storage space very costly, hence the size of the software was smaller. And every byte had to be saved. The issue even then was whether you wanted to price your product higher because the complete date took more disk space. It was essentially a trade-off between getting an order or keeping a future problem in mind."

How to beat the crisis? Through rigorous testing and correction in the computer systems. There are two ways: to expand the date field to four digits or to add a code that looks at those two existing digits and appends the proper century. To do this, code writers must first find all the dates, which could get tricky because of unconventional date coding by programmers. The code folks must then identify all instances in which an organisation or corporation exchanges data electronically. Unless both exchanging parties are '2000-compliant', either could become easily contaminated by the non-compliant system. More daunting is the testing of these changes, which could be the most time-consuming part.

As engineers, Indians have understood the problem and the opportunity that it provides like no other country. But as a country, not many efforts worth a mention can be found. At best, some governments have passed legislation making it illegal to sell noncompliant software. The shortage of people who can address the problem, and their services getting costlier as the critical date draws nearer, has only made matters worse.

Studies by Gartner Group, one of the largest information technology consulting companies, show that awareness constitutes just 1 per cent of the project management of a typical Y2K problem.  And if that 1 per cent is not fulfilled, no further steps can be taken. The greater the ignorance, the greater the disaster.

All the talk, or the action so far, does not impress Partha Iyengar, country manager of the Gartner Group. "According to our estimates, only 50 per cent of the companies will end up being fully compliant," he warns. The consequence of either the company or its vendors not being compliant are so huge that any cost should not be enough.

Like HLL which, more than two and a half years after it initiated the exercise, is scheduled to complete the testing of all its systems by the end of October this year. But says Dadiseth: "Despite that, I cannot sleep in peace at night." The 14 months that HLL has after October will be used for testing the compliance of the system. The bill? Over Rs 40 crore, a cost several mid-size companies cannot afford.

But will all companies complete their testing in time? "I have not known any IT project which is completed in time," laments Girish Vaidya of ANZ Grindlays Bank. "Nearly 50-60 per cent of the problem is testing," says Srivastava of IIS Infotech.

Is India coping? How? Many feel Y2K is just a lot of hype in India where computerisation started only in the '80s and is still in a nascent stage. But, as any software expert will tell you, awareness is the first big step and the people who are crucial are still to come to grips with the proportions of the problem. And many senior officials in government and government companies are still quite ignorant.

Embedded chips, stand alone or networked computers. For India,already facing an economic slowdown over the last few years, coupled with the economic sanctions and the resultant squeeze, the Y2K issue could not have come at a worse time. But, surely, the problem could have been anticipated, given the growing global awareness. Points out a government official: "A number of countries around the globe have ensured that any information regarding the problem is known to as many people as possible. Several countries now have their web sites for dissemination of information. Unfortunately, we are not even thinking on those lines."

As far as India is concerned, the most seriously affected system will be the financial services and the government, warns Plemmons, who has been keeping an eye on the companies which have set a hectic pace in beating the clock with a solution. But, he hastens to add that Indian companies should not face that insurmountable a problem, given Indian software professionals' record around the world.

Plemmons has a point. Mark J. Riedy, a Washington-based attorney involved in Indo-US business, recently cited this example to Congress during the sanctions controversy. As much as 47 per cent of the work under way to prevent a breakdown of US computers is being done by 1.5 lakh Indian nationals based in the US or is being subcontracted out to software companies in India.

AMONG those who need help is MTNL, which looks after 3 million telephone lines in Delhi and Mumbai and has taken up a pilot project on Y2K. S. Rajagopalan, CMD, MTNL, told Outlook recently that he had convened a meeting of all the vendors who have supplied exchanges to MTNL to ensure that their systems were 100 per cent safe. The entire exercise is necessary because a majority of MTNL's exchanges have been changed from analog to electronic in the last few years. "We will begin testing in the near future," he added.

Incidentally, in the UK, the $15-billion British Telecom has already spent over £500 million over the last five years in addressing the problem. If not that much, the Rs 4,500-crore MTNL will have to spend a sum large enough to hurt.

The Department of Telephones, which manages over 18 million connections throughout the country, is tackling the problem in its usual way. Under the member (technology) in the Telecom Commission, the government has appointed a millennium committee. The problem essentially relates to software. Hardware comes in only where there is a shortage of disk space, which will mean that after the rollover to January 1, 2000, the hard disk or the data will become junk. It can only be corrected if remedial action is taken and, more importantly, thoroughly tested, well ahead of time. However, some hardware which has a system clock (it can be compared to a clock & calendar with only two digits, like 98 for the current year, built into the hardware) that is micro-coded with two digits will have to be thrown aside when the new century arrives.

Says Nasscom's Mehta: "It will be difficult to recover. Many systems may not be recoverable or the expenses may be too high." Despite that, Mehta believes that two or three months after the problem has dawned on the world, "we will still discover new things."

Can we afford it? It is here that the element of cost comes in. While Indian software engineers have been busy ensuring flawless performance of large computerised networks abroad, the ones at home have been left behind quite like crumbs after meals. Complains an official in the Railway Board, the planner for India's giant rail network: "We are not solving the problem here. We are doing it for others." Indian Railways does have a problem. The salary billing and leave and provident fund accounts are all fully computerised. In the absence of any testing having been done, "probably even God must have given up hope," says the official.

Public sector giants like ONGC and SAIL will face a lot of problems because the very nature of their job is such that they require mainframes to function. The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) has recently purchased new hardware which is fully Y2K compliant. But are all the stock exchanges compliant? "We must ask the exchange authorities if their system is fully compliant," said a Delhi Stock Exchange broker, candidly admitting he had no clue as to what Y2K was.

Says Satish Navalkar, senior vice-president (IT and telecom) at the National Stock Exchange: "Even without Y2K there is much panic, what will actually happen on January 1, 2000?" In Plemmons' words, it could be either erroneous sorting, bad information and wrong calculation—all the three or any one which could send the financial system into a tizzy. Read, financial disaster.

Consider the hypothetical example of a bank whose software is Y2K non-compliant.The bank has to calculate interest on deposits, maintain its liquidity on a day-to-day basis and sanction loans, among its several other functions. On December 31, 1999, it will become impossible for the bank to sort the accounting entries on date basis. The interest calculations could go awry since Monday, January 3, 2000, will be read by the computers as 03/01/00—the bank records may show the interest figure in the negative! When the bank executives try to check the liquidity position at the end of 03/01/00, the amount itself may not be quite correct because the pre-01/01/2000 daily balance will be a positive figure while anything after that date will be a negative figure! Is is too pessimistic to expect that the bank will collapse?

Indeed, many will. Banks and small companies. "Absolutely, no question about it," agrees IIS' Srivastava. Plemmons says large corporations may have the resources to fight legal suits and stay afloat but small businesses will surely go under.

BUT the insurance companies really seem to have anticipated the problem very well. General Insurance Corporation (GIC) chief information officer Prince Azariah says his company will have no problems because, thanks to pressure from the unions, computerisation started late and is terribly slow. GIC is also in the process of replacing its old non-compatible software. "CMC has also developed an integrated Oracle-based software for us. This is currently being tested and should be ready to install soon," says Azariah.

"Computer courts will be deluged with complaints against companies and banks. Companies with incomplete Y2K corrective action could face further litigation in case insurance firms decline to cover losses," warns Joseph Pookkatt, a Delhi-based lawyer and a Y2K-watcher.

The Unit Trust of India (UTI), which has 2,500 offices managing Rs 60,000 crore worth of assets, has been upgrading itself over a period of time from Cobol-based applications to Foxpro and Oracle, both of them Y2K compatible. Informs deputy general manager Prasun Mandal: "We have an internal target of being totally Y2K compatible by December 1998." He assures that at the corporate office one person per zone is overseeing the entire process of ensuring Y2K compatibility, but "during the last six months we have been propagating the problem to individual users".

 "As we have gone deeper and deeper, the problem has become bigger and bigger," says Dadiseth, who has also ensured that all of HLL's vendors are compliant to "ensure continuity of business." That is where it will hurt. Since it will create a lot of unemployment hardships to the average person. Experts are already saying that the Y2K problem has been the costliest repair exercise undertaken in the history of mankind.

Dadiseth could not be more precise. The embedded chip poses an even greater danger than the computer itself because the average person does not know of its existence. As per guesstimates on the Internet, nearly 10 per cent of the embedded chips are non-compliant. The problem is that nearly seven million chips were sold in 1997 and, like the proverbial needle in the haystack, there's no way to find out which are the guilty ones?

"Over the next year or so, global growth rates are expected to go down by 0.3 per cent as companies divert their resources to address the problem. The effect of the slowdown will be felt in the first five years of the next century," says Dadiseth, quoting predictions by industry experts. And who can deny that the IT industry has been one of the driving forces of the marketplace over the last few years? SO start planning for the special new year's eve party , from now and in a different way. To make sure that celebrations can be trouble-free in the coming years.