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Comment: |
In the April 28 report from the General Accounting Office, DEFENSE COMPUTERS: YEAR 2000 COMPUTER PROBLEMS THREATEN DOD OPERATIONS, we learn that of the 2,915 mission-critical systems, only 9% are corrected. Of the 25,600+ nonmission-critical systems, 1.7% have been fixed (p. 10). They have defined 11% of their systems as mission-critical. Pareto's 80-20 "law" tells us that this estimate is too low. When 89% of their systems are nonmission-critical, I wonder: How many of them must fail before they take down the whole system? We will find out in 2000.
The military has not completed its inventory of systems (p. 13ff.), prioritized these systems (p. 17ff.), or implemented a testing program (pp. 17ff.). There is no central organization in charge of its 1.5 million computers, 28,000 systems, and 10,000 network interconnections.
In short, there is no evidence that the military will meet the deadline.
This report is in a PDF file. You need Acrobat Adobe to read it. It is not easy to read even then. But if you have any illusions that the U.S. military will come close to meeting its deadline, you had better read it.
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