Debugging Y2K.

With a mere seven months remaining, many association executives have Y2K and its bug on the brain as they complete system upgrades and turn their attention to testing, re-testing, and testing some more.

Make way, El Nino: A technological storm is brewing that may provoke more universal blame than all the havoc ever attributed to your warm winds. From now into next year, that darn computer bug will get accused for everything from faxes that won't transmit and accounting programs that won't compute to gas pumps and grocery store cash registers that reject customers' credit cards. For anyone who has had his or her head in the clouds for the past year, the bug we're referring to is the one that may infect computers when the clock strikes 12 on January 1, 2000. Some people are worried that early computer programmers' space-saving measure of using two digits to denote the year will cause computers to misinterpret 2000 as 1900, which could cause glitches.

Fortunately, recent conversations with association executives reveal an overall optimism about entering the year 2000, despite the worldwide management challenge that still has some organizations scrambling to beat the clock. Yes, executives say, we can all count on some glitches as a result of the computer bug - even at organizations that have done full-scale conversions and upgrades of their systems and software. But with solid contingency plans in place, individual businesses, entire industries, and the associations that represent them are moving forward, trusting their compliance efforts.

WEIGHING IN ON Y2K READINESS

Where are associations on the Y2K readiness scale? About four months ago, ASSOCIATION MANAGEMENT surveyed members of ASAE's Executive Management Section to find out how much time and money their associations are dedicating to year 2000 concerns and when the associations expect to be compliant. (Survey findings are included throughout this article.)

Kathleen Krajewski, president of Krajewski and Associates, Rockville, Maryland, also has been collecting information. She has been heavily involved in year 2000 issues for the past two years and has consulted with more than 300 associations on Y2K. In her view, typically, larger associations with 50 or more staff members and operating budgets from $5 million upwards are ready. "They have the resources to effectively assess and develop solutions," says Krajewski, "and as a result many are now in the final testing stages."

Midsize associations - with 20-49 staff members - are generally still hard at work but making good progress, Krajewski continues. It's the smaller associations that represent the fork in the road. "Half of them have bought all new computers and software. The other half, however, haven't even looked into the problem," she says. (If your association hasn't started thinking about the year 2000 problem with regard to internal operations, see Krajewski's article, "Y2K Compliance Countdown," immediately following this story.)

Regardless of degree of readiness, something all associations need to understand is how their systems and programs are being made compliant, says Krajewski. Be sure to ask your vendors and get this information in writing, she advises. "And keep in mind that this isn't an either - or kind of problem. Some portions of a modified program may be compliant while others may not be."

THE COST OF COMPLIANCE

Click through the deluge of year 2000 information available on the Internet, and you will find estimates that range in the hundreds of billions for what the United States in the aggregate will spend on Y2K compliance. (See sidebar, "Assistance on the Web," for a list of helpful sites.) While associations as a whole aren't spending that much, what individual organizations are spending to get ready varies widely.

"We haven't really spent anything on Y2K per se, because we were already expecting to spend what we have on our move," says Teresa L. Saylor, CAE, executive director of the 13-staff North Carolina Press Association, Raleigh. NCPA recently spun off from an association management firm, and as a result of the association's planned move this past November, Saylor had budgeted for almost all new equipment, including a new telephone system, file server, fax machine, and postage meter. "Since we knew about Y2K, we were able to include compliance specifications in all our requests for proposals," says Saylor. "It would have been a real tragedy for us if we had moved three years ago and had bought all new equipment that we later found not to be compliant."

Gene Hale, managing director of the International Aloe Science Council, Irving, Texas, says he's spent only about 80 hours total on Y2K issues and expects to shell out a maximum of $4,000 to get his two-person, two-computer office Y2K ready with new software and new computer chips. To be safe, however, he has budgeted an additional $5,000 for new systems just in case the council's existing ones fail.

On the other end of the association spectrum is Ed Futa, chief information officer and manager of administrative support services for Rotary International, Evanston, Illinois. He and the association's 45-member information technology staff have been working on Y2K issues and a complete system upgrade for about a year and expect to be compliant by the end of this month. The upgrade has included swapping out all desktop systems, replacing all cabling and wiring, and purchasing new file and database servers and a new telephone system. In addition, the association upgraded all its major packaged and custom software applications - numbering 66 for the Evanston headquarters alone, where about 480 of the 550 Rotary International worldwide staff are located. According to Futa, the complete system upgrade will cost the association about $20 million, which includes $5-$7 million for Y2K issues.

But this wasn't a hard sell to the association's board. "The board has been very supportive," says Futa. "Most of the board members are sophisticated businesspeople who understand the depth, scope, and resources necessary to address the problem." The association also recognizes that information is its key resource and information exchange its most vital function. The Evanston headquarters maintains the majority of records of Rotary International's 1.2 million members in 29,000 clubs in 160 countries. It also maintains information about the status of donations and the grants for which members are eligible. Says Futa, "The board understands that the changes we're making are investments in our future ability to deliver the level of service we need to give our members."

HELPING MEMBERS PREPARE

While some association executives have spent much of their time and resources internally on Y2K, others have devoted significant attention to helping their members get ready. James S. Maag, executive vice president of the Kansas Bankers Association, Topeka, sits on his members' Y2K task force. It is estimated that the banking industry alone will spend more than $10 billion nationwide getting ready for Y2K, says Maag.

While bankers normally bemoan additional regulation, admits Maag, year 2000-related regulation "has been to the industry's advantage because it got us moving very early. Most everything a bank does is time sensitive and must interface with automated clearinghouses, the Federal Reserve wire, and so forth." These processes present critical issues for bankers, says Maag, so the money spent on Y2K compliance "hasn't gone down a hole."

Terese Penza, CAE, president and chief operating officer for the North Shore Board of Realtors, Northbrook, Illinois, says she's regarded by some of her members as a Y2K fanatic. That's fine with her, though, because her biggest fear is having members call the first of the year in a state of panic when they can no longer access the association's multiple listing service. "If we can't deliver our most important services to members, then we've lost our value," says Penza. "That alone motivates me not to care about the criticism."

In addition to offering members a year 2000 telephone help line, Penza and her staff have developed a Y2K training and evaluation package to take on the road to help members assess their readiness. The association has also partnered with a company to provide a variety of services geared to helping members obtain compliance. "We've essentially done everything for them but buy them new systems - and in the long run, that might have been easier," she quips.

IT'S A Y2K WORLD

Many wonder what the impact of Y2K will be internationally and how U.S. operations, specifically, may be affected. Enter the Information Technology Association of America, Arlington, Virginia. Positioning itself as the Y2K association, ITAA has worked closely with both government and private-sector concerns. Most recently, says President Harris Miller, the association helped launch the International Y2K Coordinating Center, Washington, D.C. The center's mission is to prod Y2K coordinators worldwide to stay on top of year 2000 concerns for their countries, to provide technical advice and assistance, and to grant money to help countries design systems and focus contingency planning so that failures aren't catastrophic.

Miller believes that Y2K readiness from an international standpoint has made progress from what he considers "a disastrous state" early last year. But he's still concerned about what may happen within less developed countries. At the very least, he says, the United States will experience minor disruptions in the supply chain as glitches and delays will undoubtedly occur with goods coming from and going to other countries. Even so, he advises against a "psychology of panic" from either the business sector or the public. Says Miller, "Often the fear of the problem is worse than the problem itself."

QUELLING PUBLIC PANIC

Maag and his Kansas Bankers Association members are currently busy addressing consumer concern and are rolling out a statewide, public-awareness campaign to make sure the survivalists don't get the upper hand. "Some people are going around telling others they should take all their money out of the bank," says Maag. "We're particularly concerned about senior citizens falling for such scams, so we're working with the state's attorney general to help educate the public. Our message is that banks are ready. Your money is insured. No unnecessary behavior is in order, so do the responsible thing."

According to Maag, the kinds of things people might experience as a result of Y2K are the same things they might experience any other day of the week - an automated teller machine going down or a bank's online banking system becoming temporarily unavailable. As part of their regulation, all banks must have a contingency plan for such Y2K glitches, says Maag. "Many will bring in generators or will contract for such services and will be ready with methods of calculating debits or credits manually, if necessary."

The banking industry and others equally concerned about public reaction to the year 2000 problem ought to get some welcome relief from the International Association of Emergency Managers, Falls Church, Virginia. According to IAEM Executive Director Elizabeth Armstrong, CAE, the association of mostly local and statewide emergency managers who coordinate emergency disaster services has prepared a set of national guidelines for communities across the country. The guidelines provide a consistent message for the public about how they should prepare for and respond to the year 2000 problem.

Phyllis Mann, IAEM president-elect, is director of emergency management for Kitsap County in Bremerton, Washington. "The importance of Y2K really entered my radar last November when I was at an alliance meeting in my community," says Mann. "Members of the alliance pretty much said, 'If all these Y2K fixes don't work, then it's up to emergency management to come to the rescue.' That really woke me up, because it's essentially true. If people don't have running water or electricity, or if fires break out in a community, then it will be our job to coordinate those emergency services."

IAEM is treating Y2K like a natural disaster - with one exception. While federal and state agencies typically take about 72 hours to respond to a state of emergency, Mann notes, "our threat analysis shows us that we may need to budget as many as 10 days for response to a technological disaster, because these agencies may already be busy responding somewhere else. There's no such thing as a hurricane hitting everyone at once. It's the simultaneous nature of Y2K and its potential for widespread impact that makes it so unpredictable from a disaster-response standpoint," she says. "But while we don't have any history of dealing with something like Y2K, we do still have a lot of lead time."

Whether or not computer glitches occur when the clock rolls over, all the hoopla surrounding Y2K has reminded executives of a few lessons.

If anything, Y2K has reminded Rotary International's Futa of the importance of contingency planning and the need to continuously evaluate your systems. "On a purely management level," Futa notes, "I was reminded of how important motivation is to getting a team to work together on a problem as large as Y2K for positive results."

Max E. Rumbaugh, Jr., executive vice president of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), Warrendale, Pennsylvania, says he sees the year 2000 problem as bearing three important reminders for associations. First, it has highlighted how dependent associations are on their suppliers to provide products and services to members. Second, it reminds executives that long-term implications always need to be kept in mind when you're making short-term, cost-reducing, or timesaving decisions. Says Rumbaugh, "One big reason we all need to deal with the year 2000 problem in the first place is because of certain shortcuts that were implemented years ago."

The third point Rumbaugh notes is that associations need to stay on top of technology at all times. When SAE began its own compliance process, it regarded Y2K as an opportunity to retire systems and programs that had become obsolete but that the association was still using. "We found that the cost to upgrade in some instances would have been about as much as to replace," says Rumbaugh. "Y2K has given associations the impetus to get current with technology. But now we all need to stay there."

Consultant Krajewski concurs and adds that the continued challenge will be how associations use the changes they're making because of Y2K to add value to what they offer members and customers - and how to preserve that value.

Along these same lines, Miller of the Information Technology Association of America views Y2K as a subset of a much larger problem. "What we need to pay attention to - and need to have been paying attention to - is protection of our critical information infrastructure," he says. National security and law enforcement are already very interested in this in large part because of the emergence of cybercrime and cyberterrorism, says Miller. "It's not only about making technology systems more reliable and secure. It's also about basic things like data backup. Many [organizations] aren't doing this or aren't doing it well."

LIFE AFTER Y2K

So will anyone even remember the year 2000 computer frenzy 10 years from now? Krajewski doubts it. "It will be the dot on a little 'i' in a big novel," she says.

Rumbaugh agrees. "Unless Y2K produces a major catastrophe, it will probably become a non-event - a blip on our collective memory screen."

You'll likely hear a different story, however, from those who've had to spend a great deal of time and money preparing for it. In fact, Futa says, "It's hard to imagine that anyone would not remember an event of this magnitude."

THE FINAL HOURS

While some executives expect to ring in the new year the same way they always do, others are altering their plans for the end of 1999. "I normally take a family vacation during that time," says Miller. "I'm still inclined to do that, but my staff keeps telling me that's not a good idea, since either way the press will likely have a million questions," he says. "If things go wrong, they'll want to know why they went wrong. If nothing goes wrong, they'll want to know why the information technology industry has been warning everyone about Y2K for the past few years."

The Kansas Bankers Association's Maag is likewise planning to stay within reach. "I may not be in the office, but I'll definitely be where I can be contacted." Because most bankers will also be close to home on December 31 - if not inside their banks - Maag's association is ensuring that its members won't miss a festive new year's celebration. The major social function at his association's annual convention this August will be a mock New Year's Eve party with the theme "Pre-testing Y2K."

Some executives will be more than on hand - they'll be hands-on. Mann, of the International Association of Emergency Managers, will take part in the round-the-clock staffing of her county's emergency operations center, on call with area firefighters and law enforcement personnel, should any local disasters break loose.

As for Futa, "I'll probably be in Honolulu celebrating in a traditional fashion - so confident am I that our systems will be ready and that our association is prepared for the worst-case scenario."

Y2K SURVEY WHO RESPONDED

When ASSOCIATION MANAGEMENT asked ASAE's Executive Management Section members where their associations were on the Y2K readiness scale, boy did they answer. We received 653 responses. Of them,

* 50.8 percent represented trade or institutional membership associations;

* 30.5 percent represented individual membership organizations; and

* 5.5 percent represented charitable organizations.

The breakdown of annual operating budgets was

* 9.3 percent with a budget of more than $10 million;

* 8.7 percent with a budget of $5,000,001-$10 million;

* 35.5 percent with a budget of $1,000,001-$5 million;

* 18.8 percent with a budget of $500,000-$1 million; and

* 22.8 percent with a budget of less than $500,000.

Note: Not all executives answered every question.

Y2K SURVEY CALCULATING COSTS

Of the 61 organizations with a budget of more than $10 million,

* 7 spent none of their 1998 operating budget seeking compliance;

* 50 spent 1-5 percent; and

* 2 spent 6-10 percent.

Of the 57 associations with a budget of $5,000,001-$10 million,

* 14 spent none of their 1998 operating budget seeking compliance;

* 39 spent 1-5 percent;

* 1 spent 6-10 percent; and

* 1 spent 11-20 percent.

Of the 232 organizations with a budget of $1,000,001-$5 million,

* 49 spent none of their 1998 operating budget seeking compliance;

* 159 spent 1-5 percent;

* 15 spent 6-10 percent; and

* 4 spent 11-20 percent.

Of the 123 organizations with a budget of $500,000-$1 million,

* 43 spent none of their 1998 operating budget seeking compliance;

* 71 spent 1-5 percent;

* 5 spent 6-10 percent; and

* 3 spent 11-20 percent.

Of the 149 associations with a budget of less than $500,000,

* 54 spent none of their 1998 operating budget seeking compliance;

* 85 spent 1-5 percent;

* 3 spent 6-10 percent;

* 2 spent 11-20 percent; and

* 1 spent more than 30 percent.

Note: Not all executives answered every question.

Y2K SURVEY RUSHING FOR THE FINISH LINE

At the time of this survey in early February,

* 34.2 percent of respondents were Y2K compliant;

* 27.6 percent expected to be compliant in one to three months;

* 28 percent were looking at four to six months;

* 7.2 percent were shooting for compliance by December 31, 1999; and

* 3 percent were not sure when they'd be compliant.

How long, from start to finish, did executives estimate that compliance took?

* 25.7 percent said more than a year

* 23.7 percent said 7-12 months

* 17.9 percent said three to six months

* 30.8 said less than three months

Note: Not all executives answered every question.

Y2K SURVEY KEEPING TIME

In 1998, what percentage of the chief staff executive's time was dedicated to Y2K issues?

* 24.4 percent of respondents said none

* 66.3 percent said 1-5 percent

* 5.4 percent said 6-10 percent

* 2.4 percent said 11 percent or more

Note: Not all executives answered every question.

ASSISTANCE ON THE WEB

Wherever you are in your association's year 2000 readiness efforts, help and insight are at hand with these Web sites, which provide a wide range of articles, checklists, statistics, and links.

* www.asaenet.org/y2K /resources.html is ASAE's year 2000 Web site. It provides resources such as links to other sites, articles, and slide presentations.

* www.itaa.org is the site of Information Technology Association of America. In addition to resources and links, you can check on pending year 2000 legislation.

* www.itpolicy.gsa.gov/mks/yr2000/y2khome.htm is a General Services Administration site that includes a wide variety of directories and links to year 2000 sites for numerous countries.

* 2000.jbaworld.com/stats provides statistics about Y2K costs - financial and human resource - and summarizes industry surveys.

* www.y2k.gov is the site of the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion. It links with state Y2K home pages to give you a better idea of what's happening in your area.

* www.y2kjournal.com is an online magazine devoted to the year 2000 problem.

* www.year2000.com is the site of Y2K guru Peter de Jager.

Karla B. Hignite is a freelance writer and editor based in Richmond, Indiana. E-mail: [e-mail].