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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 12, 1998)
f the year 2000 deadline By Brian Carlson Senior staff writer Four hundred forty-six days and counting. When the world rings in the new year, century and millennium on Jan. 1, 2000, it will face a problem with out precedent: the year 2000 prob lem, also known as the millennium bug or simply Y2K. University of Nebraska-Lincoln officials have been preparing for m A M A ..AAA ▲a a Ao lAxv/iv iiiau a jrwai iu vuu* front the problem, caused by the fact that many com puters will be unable to recognize the date “2000” and may either shut down or not work properly. If left unchecked, UNL officials say, the Y2K bug could jeopardize a variety of services - ranging from telephones to utilities to computers to research equipment. “We don’t have the lux ury of time,” said Gary Aerts, manager of admin istrative systems for Information Services. No time to panic Aerts is leading the university’s efforts to reach year 2000 compli ance. Though it is not time to panic, he said, students and faculty members should understand the problem and develop a plan for confronting it - while they still have time. “The more we talk about it, the better the chances we will go into the O 1 St__ i._ .. 'iL _ * wwuiuxjr nun uui heads up, not buried,” he said. UNL has embarked on what Aerts called a “large-scale preventive maintenance project” to minimize the problems associated with the Y2K bug. The project prescribes six steps for departments and services to undertake, with the ultimate goal of reaching universitywide compliance by December 1998. Although Aerts said UNL won’t reach this goal, many departments’ efforts are well under way and expected to make significant progress during 1999. MostY2K compliance work will be undertaken by existing faculty members, he said. The compliance steps advise departments to write a plan to solve their own Y2K bugs and carry out that plan. Developing a plan requires a thorough familiarity with the range of potential problems and brain storming to develop solutions, Aerts said. “Everybody wants a half-page or quarter-page answer, and it doesn’t exist,” he said. “The potential exists for year 2000 exposure to happen on any given device. The fact is, there is no silver bullet.” As colleges and departments develop plans for handling Y2K, Aerts said, they should set priorities and confront their most pressing problems first. At the top of the agen da, he said, are health and safety, communications and utilities. The effects of the Y2K bug are somewhat unpredictable, Aerts said, so colleges and departments should develop solutions and back up plans to deal with a wide spectrum of potential problems. Aerts said the complexity ofY2K is compounded by the fact that even if an institution such as UNL solves its own Y2K problems, it still must rely on outside service providers and vendors to solve their own problems. For instance, he said, UNL’s attempts to solve problems related to telecommunications are heavily dependent upon Aliant Communic ations’ efforts. “Even as we get our act together at the university, we’re still at the mercy of the larger world,” he said. Apocalypse or nothing Aerts credited Gregg Frey, an information system man ager for the College of Arts and Sciences, with providing strong leader ship in the Y2K compli ance efforts of that large and diverse college. Frey said the college primarily was concerned with upgrading noncompliant servers, comput e r i z e d class rooms and research equipment. For exam ple, the col lege needs to spend about $4,500 to upgrade its non S N \ \ \ ^ V V compliant server carrying the com puterized testing for an introductory political science class. This spring, the college spent $2,100 to upgrade a noncompliant server that otherwise was adequate for controlling the printing in 10 departments. In a worst-case scenario, Frey said, Y2K could cause research equipment to fail, ruining projects and causing the university to lose research funding. Because of possible repercus sions such as these, Frey said, those whose jobs could be affected by Y2K snouia iammarize tnem selves with the problem and L address it responsibly. “There’s a fine line between scaring people and communicating to people that you need to investigate this,” he said. “The big thing is, a lot of people think, ‘It doesn’t affect me, and if it does, somebody else will fix it.’” Richard Haugerud, assistant director of the UNL Telecommunications Center, said his department has focused on ensuring Y2K compliance among its own equipment. Haugerud said alarm systems and computer wiring connected to the Telecommunications Center would continue to function properly as long as individual alarms and com puters themselves are com pliant. But the Telecommunic ations Center must replace a noncompliant telephone conference bridge used for telephone conference calls, a task expected to be com pieiea oy ine ena oi mis year. Also, Haugerud said, the Telecommunications Center is work ing with Aliant Communications to ensure that telephone services con tinue to function in January 2000. Although the year 2000 problem has created reac tions ranging from apathy to doomsday predic tions, Aerts said, the problem must be con fronted rationally ih the short time left Most important, Aerts said, is that people not panic. They should nei ther believe the dooms- ' day stories nor blithely ignore the problem, he said. “The year 2000 problem is going to be somewhere between ‘Apocalypse Now’ and noth ing,” he said. “But doing nothing is not an answer.” Steps of compliance Every department or college at the universi ty is required to go through six steps to achieve year 2000 compliance. By late September, most of UNL’s 169 departments and colleges were between steps two and five. — Step one: Appoint a representative to handle Y2K compliance. (Completed by 100 percent of offices.) — Step two: Study the department’s inven tory to make sure it is aware of all equipment that could be affected. (Completed by 61 per cent.) — Step three: Assess Y2K’s potential impact on the department’s technology. (Completed by 38 percent.) — St*p four: Determine if hardware and software are Y2K compliant. (Completed by 31 percent.) — Step five: Develop a plan for overcoming Y2K problems. (Completed by 22 percent.) — Step six: Carry out the plan. As of last week, six departments (3.5 percent) had done so: Women’s Studies, General Studies, the Cooperative Extension Division, the Nebraska Union, Arts and Sciences advising and the chancellor’s office. More information on these steps is available online at http://www.unl.edu/year2k/ ""' REGMNCIES... ...can change your life in an instant. 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