Canadian Government Executive - Volume 26 - Issue 01

TECHNOLOGY 12 / Canadian Government Executive // January/February 2020 Winston Churchill’s admonition, “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” I leaned on Cabinet’s recognition of our Y2K success to secure an invitation to present what became BC’s first e-government plan. I thought that now that we had “earned our stripes” in managing IT in a disaster scenario, so we were qualified to dem- onstrate what more we could do with IT to improve the business of government. However, before I could bring this invi- tation to fruition, I received an invitation of my own. The very same Parliamentary Public Accounts committee that had chal- lenged us on underspending on Y2K a few weeks before wanted me back to explain why we had spent so much of taxpayers’ hard-earned money on something that didn’t happen. Meanwhile, out in the real world, I observed a very special Y2K moment at the local Canadian Tire store where I encountered what seemed to be a longer than usual post-Christmas return line up. Several customers were lugging bulky machines to the service desk. Y2K had passed, and they were returning resi- dential power generators that they had purchased for the “emergency.” Two decades have given us a lot of time to reflect on the Y2K experience. What were the key success factors in the cam- paign? Is Y2K’s legacy alive and well in building an improved response capability for emergencies? For me, the key success factor lay in set- ting clear and high-level lines of account- ability for the system-by-system remedia- tion that was conducted across the public sector. There was no room for ambiguity here, so the roles and consequences of fail- ure were clearly established. Our decision to use established processes and mecha- nisms such as the provincial emergency preparedness system and the business continuity planning processes not only avoided re-inventing the wheel but test- drove those processes against a real-time emergency. Our province-wide approach to coordination and communications was effectively powered by extensive informa- tion sharing and transparent public re- porting on the Y2K fix process. There was no room for grandstanding or selfishness here; we were all in this fight together. More could have been done for sure, like more efficient and scaled-up sharing of Y2K projects among jurisdictions in Cana- da. But enough was done to get us all over the goal line. On the verge of 2020, I find myself won- dering whether Y2K’s legacy has left us better equipped to manage the potentially more devastating technology threats that we face today. Paradoxically, as our depen- dency on IT continues to rapidly evolve, we are confronted by an increasingly unstable and ungoverned global internet system. Moreover, the case for more effec- tive regulation of internet-based technolo- gies to protect its users faces strong oppo- sition from both proprietary technology interests and anarchistic ‘open-sourcers’ who seem to want anything but. As we approach 2020, the potential scale of this paradox appears to far outstrip Y2K’s potential impact. Cyber security, so- cial media-led privacy invasions, amateur and state-sponsored hacking, artificial in- telligence systems, the ubiquitous “inter- net of things” – all were barely concepts in the late 1990s but now materially affect everyday life. The potential of IT flaws and sporadic hacks to bring down the operations and services of a government has gone well beyond Y2K’s bothersome but well-intentioned effort to address memory storage. I hope the key compo- nents of the Y2K arsenal, such as IT sys- tems accountability, business continuity planning, communications and provincial emergency preparedness, will all be regu- larly reviewed and refreshed in diligent organizations and not be consigned to binders of ‘shelfware.’ However, without the time-ticking deadline of Y2K’s cal- endar rollover, one wonders if we could quickly marshal these forces, especially against more random and unexpected foes. Perhaps our collective reflection on the Y2K experience will prompt a review of our IT diligence and response plans to see if they are up to the test should we need them again. As with Y2K, there is a strong role for public accountability mechanisms – such as Auditors General oversight and the vesting of responsibility for technology with executives – to pick up the challenge and reactivate readiness. In the meantime, a very happy “9-flips- to-0” New Year to all. Reference: 1. Office of the Auditor General of BC, “Report on the Prepared- ness of the Government of British Columbia in Dealing with the Year 2000 Problem,” October 1999. Stuart Culbertson is a former Deputy Minister in the government of British Columbia and led BC’s Y2K response program as the Province’s Chief Infor- mation Officer from 1998 to 2001. British Columbia had the benefit of being one of the last places to reach the Year 2000. New Zealand was one of the first – 19 hours ahead of BC. The first thing I did when I awoke in the wee hours of that morning was to check New Zealand’s Y2K website, which, happily, was live – indicating at least some success.