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NY IT blues
State halts new projects as report warns of millennium meltdown
By Liam White The Governor of New York State has banned all non-essential IT projects to minimise the disruption caused by the year 2000 bomb.
The decision comes in the wake of a detailed report which forecasts the millennium will throw the city into chaos, with power supplies, schools, hospitals, transport and the finance sector likely to suffer severe disruption. The city's trouble is compounded by the recent departure of the head of its year 2000 project to a job in the private sector.
Governor George Pataki declared "a moratorium on all new technology
initiatives which impact an agency's ability to achieve date
compliance". The decree covers all functions carried out by the State,
which include health, police, social services, education, transport,
employment and taxation. Both city and State governments must find
hundreds of millions of dollars to tackle the millennium bug.
In a presentation to the New York Year 2000 User Group in July, a State official said it was only 5% of the way through its millennium projects, which it expected to cost between $100m (œ63m) and $185m.
The City of New York is spending $200m to replace its non-compliant
budget and accounting system, plus $100m on fixing or replacing other
systems. Despite these efforts and those being made in the private
sector, an independent study of New York's infrastructure has estimated that the city still faces massive disruption for up to a month at the start of the year 2000.
The study, carried out by UK-based Corporation 2000, expects the city's hospitals to be reduced to accepting emergency cases only, and schools to be closed for up to a month. Power supplies and telecoms are only expected to be available at half their normal levels, and banks and the stock market will be shut for up to eight days.
Corporation 2000 arrived at its assessment, which was presented to the
State's year 2000 project leader, by using a team of postgraduate
students to identify the city's key infrastructure components, assess
what services they depend on, and then evaluate the progress of year
2000 projects in each component and its suppliers.
The model also takes into account factors such as geography, and the
historically-assessed political and economic capability of a city to
tackle major problems.
Commenting on the findings, Andrew Eristoff, chairman of the Task Force on Technology in Government for New York City Council, said, "It does sound as if lives would be at risk if that were the case."
The State government would not comment on the study's findings. A
spokesman said individual departments are already working on contingency plans to deal with problems that could arise over the millennium. Next week, how New York is tackling the year 2000 bomb.
Corporation 2000's predictions for New York in 2000
Electricity supply only 50% available 1-10 January
Hospitals emergency-only for four weeks
Schools closed for four weeks
Stock market and banks closed for eight days
Telecoms - 50% availability 1-10 January
Post - 10 days disruption
Transport (air/rail/bus) - 30 days disruption |
