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Comment: |
Andrew Hove, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insures the nation's bank accounts, presented a verbally glowing report to Congress in November about how advanced the FDIC's repair was. The FDIC has completed the inventory. Well, whoopdy-doo. The
California White Paper says that awareness is 1%, inventory is 1%.
But, even better, the FDIC has actually done some of the assessment. Assessment is 5% of the task.
He says the FDIC has been working on this problem for a year. Yes, my friends, a whole year! "The FDIC’s internal Year 2000 effort is on schedule. This project has been ongoing for over a year." Well, with forward-looking action like this, what have we to worry about? So what if Social Security has been working on its problem since 1991 and is at best about 40% compliant (after the discovery of an extra 33 million lines of code)? So what if testing constitutes half or more of a repair project? No problem! Trust us!
Furthermore, the FDIC has a plan to develop a contingency plan. It doesn't have the contingency plan yet, however, which is OK, because there will be no serious contingencies. Trust us! "We are developing procedures for such contingency plans, but at this time we do not anticipate that any critical systems will be deemed to be at risk for not being renovated in time. As part of the contingency planning process, we will continually review our progress and develop contingency plans if schedules slip for any critical system."
No one in the media reported that Hove's testimony is an admission of complete failure.
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The FDIC’s internal Year 2000 effort is on schedule. This project has been ongoing for over a year. The project team is using the General Accounting Office Year 2000 Assessment Guide as its model for project planning and management. During the first half of 1997, the FDIC carried out an aggressive awareness phase by using briefings, internal newsletter articles and an internal Internet presence to inform employees of Year 2000 issues and risks.The project team is using the General Accounting Office Year 2000 Assessment Guide as its model for project planning and management. During the first half of 1997, the FDIC carried out an aggressive awareness phase by using briefings, internal newsletter articles and an internal Internet presence to inform employees of Year 2000 issues and risks.
We began our assessment phase early this year and to date we have virtually completed a detailed inventory of our computer software. The only remaining items to inventory and assess are small, low volume, non-critical items. We are well underway toward developing a detailed code-level assessment and scanning major systems. We also have begun the remediation process, preparing Year 2000 ready test environments to validate remediated code and to test systems which we believe are Year 2000 compliant. The FDIC awarded a contract in August 1997, which will provide significant support for detailed assessment, code renovation, and strong emphasis on testing of code and all hardware and software environments.
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