Speaking of:
"...For every "We spent tens or hundreds of millions of dollars and we're done." company, there's at least one, perhaps ten or a hundred companies that didn't do a thing.
These companies will have to expend the same tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of effort but they'll do it in crisis mode, not with ample time and resources as a few did in 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, and in 1999..."
Oh, Canada!
Sunday, August 8, 1999
Ottawa's Y2K bug repellent -- strong enough?
By JAMES MCCARTEN -- The Canadian Press
TORONTO -- With 21 weeks to go before the year 2000, a critical
battle in Canada's war against the most famous computer glitch in
history has moved into high gear.
The big question is whether it will be enough.
Across the country, businesses and governments alike are feverishly
fixing their exposure to the so-called millennium bug, also known as
the Year 2000 bug or Y2K.
But the heavy ammunition in the war against Y2K is information, says
Doug Drever, a spokesman for Industry Canada's Year 2000 Secretariat.
Ottawa has produced more than 20 million documents on the issue and
the government's Y2K Web site has generated more than 700,000 visits.
Nearly 40,000 phone calls to a toll-free information line have also
been logged.
"We do know people are listening," said Drever, who added that recent
polls show nearly everyone in Canada knows about Y2K, which could
cripple computers that don't recognize the year 2000.
But listening is one thing. Doing something is another.
Drever says as many as 350,000 businesses have done nothing to
prepare themselves for Y2K, even though they're entitled to federal
guidance, advice and tax breaks on new equipment.
Some say the inaction is partly the result of politics.
Peter de Jager, a Canadian computer consultant and expert on Y2K,
says a lack of co-operation and co-ordination between Ottawa and the
provinces has "interfered strongly" with Canada's millennium bug
efforts.
"Right from Day 1, Y2K required a central organizing agency, and that
was never forthcoming," de Jager said.
"There was never in our government a Year 2000 czar, if you want, who
was in charge and therefore responsible for the remediation of this
problem."
Ottawa has spent up to $3.5 billion on its own efforts -- becoming a
model Y2K fighter -- but was too slow off the mark, he said.
"The Canadian government has done a tremendous amount to make people
aware and to put their own house in order; there's no debate about
that," de Jager said. "But they started late; there's also no debate
about that, either."
The Year 2000 problem tends to be most common in computer
applications created before 1995, and arises from the way the date is
stored.
To save memory, older programs and microprocessors were designed to
store the year's last two digits rather than all four numbers. When
the year 2000 arrives, systems with the bug are expected to mistake
'00' for the year 1900.
The federal government and the provinces will allow businesses to
deduct some of the cost of new Y2K-compliant computer hardware and
software.
Ottawa is also offering $50 million in flexible loans through the
Canadian Business Development Bank and the First Step action plan,
which pairs students and businesses to help isolate susceptible areas
and implement solutions.
There was also the Millennium Bug Home Check pamphlet that went out
to 12 million households earlier this year in a bid to quell Y2K fears
and help residents identify household hot spots such as personal
computers.
Joe Boivin, founder of the Global Millennium Foundation, an
Ottawa-based Y2K think tank, says Y2K has the potential to trigger
international economic shock waves that could spread around the world
much like last year's Asian economic crisis.
"All of the national economies are stretched right now with all kinds
of historic problems," Boivin said. "Y2K could very well be the
feather that lands on top of this mess at the turn of the century, and
therein lies the real threat." |
