http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/dialogue/dualogue.html

January 7 issue of Dialogue

The bugs stayed away

by Keith Lawrence

No corks popped and no wild cheering ensued. But the dozens of Duke workers on campus or in the hospital on New Year's Eve to squash any Y2K bugs that surfaced seemed quite content that the date for which they had spent years preparing arrived uneventfully.

Like most everywhere else, Duke did not encounter any major problems when the Year 2000 rolled around. Dave Kirby, who headed the hospital's Y2K planning efforts, said Duke University Health System (DUHS) experienced about 10 minor glitches in the days surrounding the rollover. "None of these was wide in scope or long in duration," he said.

The rest of the university had similar results.

"This is primarily because of all the work that went into remediating the systems and testing them," Kirby said. "Our prediction for the rollover was that we should expect to have a noticeable but manageable number of problems. The results are consistent with this prediction."

While analysts worldwide may have been holding their collective breaths as the clock passed midnight on Dec. 31, Veronica Garcia was doing the exact opposite as she brought an 8-pound, 8-ounce son into the world 11 seconds after midnight at Duke Hospital. Although Juan David Cerrano-Garcia wasn't the first baby of the new millennium in the United States, he was the Triangle's first baby.

Things were quieter in the Tel-Com Building, where the dozen staffers in the university's command center read books, watched television reports and swapped stories as they waited for midnight to arrive. When the clock struck 12, the staffers wished each other a happy New Year. By 1 a.m., many of them prepared to leave.

While many people now seem to think that Year 2000 fears were unfounded, Kirby thinks the time and money spent on Y2K issues were well worth it.

"Almost all of the work done and the money spent in DUHS was on computer systems that had known problems and would have failed if not repaired. Almost all of the systems on which DUHS depends for day-to-day operations had to be upgraded, repaired or replaced.

"So, if we had not done this work, the broad result would be that almost all of these systems would have failed, and there would have been major multi-day interruptions in clinical and business operations."

Betty Leydon, vice provost for information technology, agreed that Duke's preparations for the Year 2000 were "definitely necessary."

"We would have had problems had we not done what we did," Leydon said. "We actually began working on Y2K-related issues a decade ago. We have replaced outdated systems that were not Y2K compliant with new systems and corrected other systems that we chose not to replace.

"The cost for purely Y2K work was very small - less than $2 million for central administrative systems - compared to what I would consider the cost of upgrading and enhancing systems that needed to be replaced anyway - $45 million to replace our financial and student systems with SAP and PeopleSoft programs, respectively."

Many other good things came out of this work, she added. "For one thing, we purchased and implemented new administrative systems with greater functionality that will last for many years.

"As the date approached and we began developing contingency plans, we were forced to look at the university's business processes to see exactly how they worked and how important they were. In some cases, processes were streamlined or eliminated altogether as a result of this examination. Although we have always had contingency plans for critical business functions at Duke, these plans were all reviewed and, in many cases, improved. As a result, we'll be in a better position should a disaster of any sort - weather or fire, for instance - arrive in the future.

"And," she added, "in a couple of cases, new equipment was purchased to provide additional backup. I know specifically of a new power generator for our computer room and a new emergency phone system for the hospital."

Leydon praised the work of Kirby and Neal Paris, who headed the university's Y2K planning efforts, and committee members who helped Duke prepare for the rollover. "At Duke, the Y2K preparations were extremely well-organized," Leydon said. "Monthly reports were prepared to monitor progress and senior administration was kept informed throughout. I think this is one of the reasons we accomplished everything required, then were able to test systems and develop contingency plans in plenty of time for Y2K."

Paris said the Year 2000 prompted Duke to address issues that sometimes get neglected. "Y2K resulted in Duke focusing on IT (information technology) at all levels: campus-wide IT infrastructure, schools, departments, individuals. This was healthy because Duke depends so much on IT, and yet IT hardware and software can get out of date very quickly."

He said that because personal computer prices had dropped so much in the last year, Duke was able to upgrade and replace hundreds of computers as well as operating systems, servers and applications. "Y2K gave an additional impetus to the large, multi-year project to replace the old mainframe, core business systems with new client/server systems written in SAP R3 and Peoplesoft."

Michael Pickett, associate chief information officer for the Office of Information Technology, said Duke over the last three years has been able to shift its administrative computing tasks from older, home-built software to commercially developed and supported software. "In addition to making a much richer and modern set of tools and information available to Duke, it also gives Duke access to regular software upgrades and support designed to fix problems like Y2K. We now have a foundation of software tools like the new Student Information (SISS) and SAP R/3 systems that over the next few years will help Duke become more effective and give us access to better information."

Richard Merritt contributed to this article.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), January 31, 2000