HS Departments Asked to Fix Their Own Y2K Bugs Betty Perez-Rivera, administrative coordinator for the Office of External Relations, visits a database created by the Y2K steering committe and located on Columbia’s web site as she works toward compliance for her department. A special steering committee, created to head Y2K compliance efforts for Health Sciences, is working with all departments to support their efforts to achieve Y2K compliance of their own equipment. Y2K is the name given to a computer problem expected to occur in 2000, if date-sensitive computer systems—originally designed to store only the last two digits of the year— confuse 2000 with 1900. This concern has sparked a global effort to avert the computer glitches that could unfold on Jan. 1. The Health Sciences Y2K Steering Committee approached this major undertaking by first categorizing the compliance needs of Health Sciences into six areas: telecommunications, buildings and grounds, central systems, scientific research, biomedical equipment, and business systems. Some of these categories require departamental involvement. For instance, each department in Health Sciences is responsible for achieving Y2K compliance for hardware and software of its own personal computers. Scientific research is another category that requires significant departmental involvement. “What we are doing is providing support and guidance for all the departments of Health Sciences, which ultimately have the responsibility to address their Y2K problems,” explains David Roe, associate vice president for budget and financial planning, who heads the special committee. The committee expects telecommunications to be compliant as the result of New York Presbyterian Hospital’s purchase of a replacement phone system. The buildings and grounds category includes elevators, heat, and electricity. Central systems are those computer-based functions used by many departments, such as payroll and personnel information systems. The committee describes Health Sciences as a “customer, in part” of these services, many of which are run by Columbia University. Compliance efforts for these areas are being addressed at Morningside. Compliance efforts for certain Health Sciences local administrative systems are being addressed by Information Technology Services. Leading the Charge Dealing with Y2K at Columbia is a sizable task. The following people have been working toward the goal of compliance for the university. Most of them are currently employed by Columbia and are working on Y2K in addition to their normal job responsibilities: The Committee David L. Roe, Associate Vice President, Health Sciences I. Niyazi Bodur, Director, Information Technology Services Anne B. Jacobs, Deputy Director, Center for Biomedical Communications Audio Visual Services Scientific Research Richard J. Sohn, Associate Dean, Research Administration Janie Weiss, Manager, Herbert Irving Comprehensive Center Computer Facility Telecommunications Steve O’Leary, Site Director, Telecommunications Phyllis E. Lowe, Coordinator, Telecommunications Biomedical Equipment Louis Marc Wetstein, Biomedical Engineer, Presbyterian Hospital Buildings & Grounds Robert Lemieux, Associate Vice President, Facilities Management Robert Maffia, Associate Vice President, Facilities Operation Business Systems Anthony Desantis, DeLoitte & Touche LLP Central Systems Jeb Huang, Project Leader, Information Technology Services In the case of research equipment, all departments and principal investigators were visited by the Y2K research team. Inventories were compiled and initial compliance determinations were made. This information was sent back to those departments and investigators. It is ultimately their responsibility to determine components’ priority and what repairs are needed. Medical equipment owned by the university has been inventoried and assessed by a team hired by the university. This team’s findings have been provided to physicians and their departments. As with research equipment, component criticality and repair are primarily the department’s responsibility. Replacing old computers might be easier than trying to make them Y2K compliant. Business systems include personal computer hardware and software. This compliance work has been organized by the committee into the following stages: inventory, assessment, remediation, testing, and continuity planning. During the inventory stage of the project, representatives from each department were asked by the committee to perform a departmental inventory. Listed were all systems and software falling within that department’s responsibility. The next phase involved assessing the inventories. All components in the inventory were checked against a database that the committee established on the university’s web site. Located at http://chaos.cpmc.columbia.edu/y2k/, this database provides compliance-related information for hardware and software. The site is updated regularly to ensure no information is missing or incomplete. All equipment expected to encounter Y2K problems were identified during this stage. For those items identified during assessment as potential problems, a determination had to be made whether it was a “high risk” component. The committee defines a component as high risk if its failure would cause the following: risk to health and safety; inability to comply with law or regulation; risk of significant financial loss to the university. The next phase involves fixing non-compliant, high-risk components. “This is a technically complex process,” Niyazi Bodur, director of information technology services and member of the steering committee, said while addressing department representatives at a Feb. 18 Y2K workshop. “If you do not feel comfortable doing this work, you may need to refer to your vendors for help.” Dr. Bodur explains one option for older, problematic equipment: “Buy a new PC. If it’s so old that you have all these problems, it’s probably time.” Later stages of the Y2K project will include testing and developing backup plans for essential systems. Such plans would outline “work-around” procedures that would sustain the use of high-risk equipment in the event of any failures.