Y2K: Trouble in pipeline if systems fail

By Chris Barton

John Gunn is working through "a challenge." If the water pumps fail because of the millennium bug, how will the North Shore City Council get water to the population?

He knows that barring something unforeseen, gravity will bring water from the Huia and Waitakere dams to the main reservoir at Sunset Rd. But between there and the eight or so other reservoirs throughout the city, there are a number of pumps. If the Y2K problem causes power failure to the city, the pumps won't work. What to do?

The city council plans to have all the city reservoirs full to overflowing just before midnight 1999. That should provide four or five days' supply. There are also plans for generators and water tankers to be on standby - just in case.

The contingency plan is just one of many that North Shore City is putting in place to deal with the unpredictable. Mr Gunn is the city's Y2K project manager - appointed just three months ago and reporting directly to the city's director of finance and corporate services, Roger Duncan.

He has the job of coordinating the city's Y2K remedial work, setting priorities for the "mission-critical" jobs, and overseeing the Y2K managers in each of the departments.

His assessment to date is positive, but honest: "NSCC is pursuing the right methodology, but somewhat late."

Like all involved in Y2K work, he stops short of giving a 100 per cent guarantee, but believes the city will come through the millennium dawn in good shape.

Power failure is seen as the biggest risk. That means Power New Zealand holds most of the cards for avoiding a big catastrophe. Mr Gunn meets the company regularly to keep abreast of its Y2K risk-mitigation plans, and so far he is confident the lights will stay on.

Such complex interdependency is a fact of life in dealing with the Y2K problem. Nothing works in isolation.

Mr Gunn's other major "community-critical" migraine is the Rosedale Rd waste-treatment plant. Here the issues are more than just power going off. The plant's machinery has standby generators to keep things ticking over, but that is not enough power to keep the plant at full capacity.

If waste-water does not flow, North Shore City will not only stink in the height of summer, it will face serious health risks. But every other city and county throughout New Zealand faces similar problems.

North Shore's waste-treatment plant has a number of PCs to monitor and control equipment. All have to be checked and tested for Y2K failure. There is also a vast number of circuit boards and program logic controllers that keep the machinery - sludge reactors, sedimentation tanks, trickle filters and de-watering equipment - going.

An insight into what's involved is seen in the plant's Y2K inventory report - covering several hundred items assessed for Y2K failure risk. While most have been deemed low risk, there are some that are "likely to fail" and will be replaced. The date-aware embedded microprocessors - chips on circuit boards that control machinery - are being ferreted out.

Industry analysts the Gartner Group describe the date-change problem in embedded chips as potentially far more serious than it is for computers. It believes these will be the "uninvited guests" that could ruin the millennium parties.

Mr Gunn explains: "The problem with embedded chips is that they're made all over the place - Taiwan, Singapore, etc - and there's no industry standard. To test them you have to pull the circuitry down in a laptop to simulate the system.

"Then you have to determine if it has a date function. Many don't. If it does, you then have to find out what happens when the date goes to `00' - whether there's a logic circuit that makes it stop. There's not many like that, but you have to check and it's very time-consuming."

But while community-critical functions take centre stage, no less important are "council-critical" functions such as rates billing and processing, building permit consents, traffic fines and the running of other facilities such as the library and community houses.

In computing terms, this involves more than 5000 files, 800 databases, thousands of spreadsheets and 450 PCs including desktops, notebooks and servers. Again, most of the inventory work has been done through contracts to Y2K specialists.

On the whole, most came through okay - only three PCs failed and some old Access databases needed upgrading.

But Mr Gunn stresses that testing and retesting is the key. The city council has built an independent test platform and is about to bring the general ledger, rates records and landbases across to see what happens when the date changes.

Rechecking is important too. Expert Computer Solutions specialist Peter Benjamin, brought in to fix some database problems, discovered a quirk in a database system that had been cleared. The system was Y2K-compliant only as long as dates were entered in four-digit formats. If someone reverted to two digits by mistake - i.e. 09 for 2009 - the programme would read the date as though it was the year 1909.

Mr Gunn says it is a good example of how little things can mess up. "If that had got in, there's no telling what sort of effect it might have had on any number of interrelated council systems."

The council has set aside $300,000 for the financial year to June 30 to deal to the Year 2000 problem. Another $300,000 is budgeted for the following year.

Given the scope of the problem it doesn't seem much - and is significantly less than other local authorities, such as Waitakere and Manukau.

But Mr Gunn points out that much of the expense is hidden in general operational maintenance. There are also a number of IT projects that have been delayed while the millennium bug takes priority.

He acknowledges, too, that in Y2K work everything becomes an assessment of risk versus cost - and that if something unexpected turns up, with high potential impact, then it has to be fixed.

"In those circumstances, whatever the cost, we have to find the money."

His schedule for the rest of the year is to have contingency plans for all the departments signed off by the end of June, and to step up the testing programme - especially for the general ledger and interconnected systems.

And where will he be watching the millennium dawn? From the waste-water treatment plant listening for the sweet repetitive sound of a sludge reactor gurgling.

Pictured: John Gunn. HERALD PICTURE / MARK SMITH