http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/pages/000301/3681522.html

Wednesday 1 March 2000

Leap Year bug bites city's tax computers Flawed software incorrectly interpreted yesterday's date as March 1, 1900, resulting in the shutdown of the system only one day before the deadline for paying municipal taxes. MICHAEL MAINVILLE The Gazette

It took two months, but the dreaded Y2K bug finally surfaced in Montreal.

The city of Montreal was forced to shut down its taxation computer system yesterday after a flawed computer program incorrectly interpreted the date as March 1, 1900.

The program, which calculates interest rates on overdue tax bills, was overlooked when the city made its computer systems Y2K-ready, so it rolled the date over to 1900 on Jan. 1.

The problem went undetected until yesterday, when the program skipped Feb. 29 because it was not programmed to accept the leap year.

In order to fix the problem, city computer experts had to shut down the entire taxation system - with only one day left before the deadline for paying municipal taxes.

Residents were still able to pay their taxes, but anyone looking for information about his tax bill or property evaluation was turned away from Access Montreal offices across the city.

"We had to shut down the entire system, just to be safe, so we do not have access to any information from the taxation system. But we are still accepting cheques, they will simply be inputted in the system later," said Florent Fafard, a systems consultant for Montreal's finance department.

Signs were posted in front of the Access Montreal offices at city hall that read: "We are sorry, but we have a bug and our taxation system is not working." Residents were told to pay their tax bill if they had all the proper documents, but to return today if they did not.

The system was running by late afternoon, after computer technicians reprogrammed it to accept the correct date.

The city of Montreal spent almost $12 million last year to make its computers Y2K ready. To date, yesterday's incident is the only recorded problem. Fafard said that, all things considered, that's not a bad track record.

"We had tested hundreds of programs related to the taxation system, but unfortunately we just missed this one," he said.

When the Y2K-bug hoopla proved to be overblown on Jan. 1, city executive-committee chairman Jean Fortier accused some of exaggerating the dangers to profit from massive spending by governments and corporations.

Despite yesterday's incident, Fortier maintained that position.

"We never had to spend all that money," Fortier said. "In fact, an incident like (yesterday's) is proof that it cost too much, because we have been able to adjust relatively easily and without any great consequence."

Other municipalities in the Montreal area were not affected by the leap-year millennium bug.

But the computer bug did have consequences in other parts of the world like Asia. In Japan, weather-monitoring devices malfunctioned, some automatic-teller machines shut down and a minor computer system at a nuclear power plant seized up.

-- Homer Beanfang (Bats@inbellfry.com), March 01, 2000

Answers

at least Montreal didnt try to hide the problem. good post homer.

-- lou (lanny1@ix.netcom.com), March 01, 2000.

"We never had to spend all that money," Fortier said. "In fact, an incident like (yesterday's) is proof that it cost too much, because we have been able to adjust relatively easily and without any great consequence."

You've got a half-wit in charge, Montreal.

-- Jim McAteer (jim_mcateer@hotmail.com), March 01, 2000.

"The program, which calculates interest rates on overdue tax bills, was overlooked when the city made its computer systems Y2K-ready, so it rolled the date over to 1900 on Jan. 1.

The problem went undetected until yesterday, when the program skipped Feb. 29 because it was not programmed to accept the leap year."

Thanks for the post, Homer. I wonder how many other programs were overlooked during remediation and are just sitting there waiting to choke.

Jimmy

-- Jimmy Splinters (inthe@dark.com), March 01, 2000.