Calm, not calamity, in local forecast for Y2K

By JEAN HELLER

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 2, 1999

A bug that costs billions Y2K may lead to why not sue Coaxing computers to comply with 2000 For economy, Y2K bug is contagious As Y2K work wanes, companies search for new niches Buy a bug Preparedness progress report Their Y2K motto: Be prepared Firms say they're prepared for Y2K

When 1999 becomes 2000, public officials in the Tampa Bay area say, toilets will flush, drinking water will run from taps, 911 calls will be answered quickly, and the coffee pot will stand ready to help overcome that morning-after feeling.

While no one is willing to guarantee that there won't be hiccups of trouble in government and public services, local officials say the new century will dawn more with a whimper than a bang.

Take Pasco County. Officials there began assessing their need for Year 2000 computer fixes back in 1994.

"We had to start early," said William Compton, the county's information management director. "We had too many programs that needed remediation and only 11 people on staff to do the programing. That way, when IBM came out with a new date field that filled out to four digits in 1996, we were ready to start applying it."

The county's computers were fully tested and "Y2K compliant" as of December, six months ahead of schedule, Compton said. Furthermore, where some governments are spending millions of dollars on consultants and equipment upgrades, Pasco did it all within its regular budget.

On the other hand, Pinellas Park police are letting some things slide. The 911 system that tracks the location of an incoming call, for example.

"Our dispatch chief says nine times out of 10, the person calling in isn't at the scene of the incident," said Jim Shanks, programing analyst for the department in mid-Pinellas County. "He'll be calling from a cellular phone in his car or down the street at a pay phone. It doesn't matter if we don't have that system because we don't use it, anyway."

The systems the Pinellas Park police consider critical, including dispatching, records and communications, will be ready for the new year.

"One weekend when we're all done, we'll take the systems off line, move the dates up to late on Dec. 31, run things until the date rolls over and see what happens," Shanks said. He expects that test will happen by summer.

"Am I 100 percent sure we've got everything? I don't know," he said. "I don't foresee any problems, but I know where I'll be on New Year's Eve." At work, that is.

Not everyone is in such good shape.

In December, when the state legislative Committee on Intergovernmental Relations asked cities, counties, agencies and school districts if they had the financial, technical and managerial wherewithal to get Y2K compliant, the Hillsborough County school district answered "no." It estimated there was $2-million worth of work to be done.

Such responses prompted Gov. Jeb Bush to announce in March a statewide public-private partnership to get all units of government, private businesses, industries and farms Y2K ready by Jan. 1.

"That's part of the reason we filled out the survey like we did," said David Smith, the Y2K coordinator for the school district. "If you tell politicians it's all done, they move on to someone else."

The Hillsborough schools had been counting on getting E-Rate funds -- a federal program designed to give every classroom and public library in the nation high-speed Internet access -- to pay to fix the system's computers.

"We haven't seen a penny of it," Smith said. "We've been funding our Y2K work with money borrowed from other school departments. All of our mission-critical systems should be ready by Jan. 1. Whether we will have all the (classroom) computers ready is the big unknown."

Scott McPherson, Bush's statewide Y2K coordinator, said there may be a lot of public agencies and private businesses in Smith's situation, or worse.

"Certain segments of the state are in good shape, certain segments -- I don't want to say they're in bad shape -- but we don't know," McPherson said. "We still don't have a handle on the status of cities, some counties and some school systems. It scares us what we don't know. We have to get in there and find out and get people the money and help they need."

Even those places already close to Y2K compliance acknowledge that some problems are possible on Jan. 1, but they expect the glitches to be minor, things that can be fixed within a few hours at best, a few days at worst. Since schools will be on break for the holidays, there is some breathing room.

"Our finance and other systems are done and tested, and now we're into the big ones, the personnel and student systems," said Sue Wetherington, a systems analyst in the Hernando County school system. "Everything critical will be in compliance by the end of April. There might be a PC somewhere that we forget to catch, but since the kids won't be here, we'll have time before school reopens."

Like Pasco, the Hernando schools upgraded without adding staff and incurred no extra costs.

As luck would have it, the Citrus County Sheriff's Office has been Y2K compliant since 1970.

"Our major systems were not designed in the traditional way," said William Reach, director of information services. "They keep track of time and dates by calculating the number of seconds elapsed since they went on line in 1970. They don't know one century from another and don't care."

At the Hillsborough County Property Appraiser's Office, where computers create the tax rolls that generate the revenue that funds most of the county's programs and services, work has been going on for nearly two years and isn't expected to be complete until the millennium is within shouting distance.

But when the fix is done, it will be reliable. It is all new, said Jan Pohto, director of data services.

"The old stuff is mainframe technology that goes back to 1985," Pohto said. "We didn't even have PCs. It was archaic. So we bought new computers and new software that is Y2K compliant right out of the box, and we expect to have it up and running by October."

Hillsborough property appraiser Rob Turner said the upgrades cost $2.8-million.

"The new equipment not only makes the transition to Y2K compliance, but it moves us away from the ancient old system and will enable us to carry out of lot of our responsibilities better, faster and more thoroughly," Turner said.

The city of St. Petersburg is focused on systems that relate to health, life and safety, and it might let some less critical systems slide, according to city auditor Steve Smith.

"All the critical systems will be Y2K compliant. We're doing the final checks on those now," he said. "The less critical ones, scheduling, spreadsheets and internal stuff, might not be ready."

The Y2K problem is not hard to fix, Smith said.

"The problem is the quantity of fixes necessary and the interplay among them," he said. "The city's computers have millions of lines of code. Each one has to be fixed, and then it must be determined which codes they impact and whether they have to be fixed. It is very labor-intensive."

One of the most critical systems for the entire region is the one that provides drinking water for residents of Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco counties. Making sure it doesn't fail requires coordination among the region's water regulator, the Southwest Florida Water Management District, the largest utility, Tampa Bay Water, and TBW customers.

Swiftmud reviewed its systems. Those considered mission-critical were upgraded and tested in December, said Chuck Gausche, the Y2K coordinator. Other systems will be done in May and June.

"We're taking an already-existing disaster recovery plan and modifying it to accommodate Y2K issues," Gausche said. "For example, in case there is a problem on the power grid, we'll make sure our generators are topped off with fuel and operating correctly, and we'll make sure all our battery backups are in peak condition."

Similar steps are under way at Tampa Bay Water.

"Our big system is water delivery," said Marty Nitzberg, information services manager. "We have generator capacity and enough fuel for five days. That should be plenty, especially because a lot of the water distribution system is kind of dumb. It doesn't really have the imbedded-chip technology that is the focus in other places."

But just in case the worst should happen, Nitzberg added, "all critical personnel will be available or on site New Year's Eve."