G8 to take urgent action on Millennium computer bug
11:57:02, 17 May 1998
By Paul Casciato
BIRMINGHAM, England, May 17 (Reuters) - Leaders of the Group of Eight (G8)
countries said on Sunday they had agreed to take urgent action to combat the possible
fallout from the millennium computer bomb.
The eight world leaders said in a final communique from this weekend's G8 Summit they
will work with business to prevent the danger of computer failures to defence,
telecommunications, financial and other systems at the turn of the century.
"We agreed to take further urgent action and to share information among ourselves and
with others, that will assist in preventing disruption in the near and longer term," the
communique said.
World industry is now so reliant on computers that a rash of failures could cause
economic disruption. Some experts say this could tip the world into recession or worse.
But the leaders of the U.S. Britain, Germany, Japan, France, Italy, Canada and Russia
said businesses in those sectors which could be affected by the bug will have to shoulder
the responsibility of protecting themselves.
"We shall work closely with business and organisations working in those sectors, who
will bear much of the responsibility to address the problem," the communique said.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who played host to the world leaders for the two-day
summit, said his nation committed some 10 million pounds ($16.24 million) to the World
Bank Trust Fund and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) to help international institutions combat the bug.
He said the G8 were all at different stages of preparation for the millennium computer
problem and that as chairman of the G8, Britain has agreed to hold a meeting of experts
on the issue in Moscow.
"We agreed...to hold a meeting of the G8 experts and do that in Moscow where
(Russian) President made a particularly strong plea as to the importance of action on the
millennium bug in his country and indeed around the world," Blair told reporters after the
final G8 meeting.
Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien said the computer bug problem was visited
twice by the world leaders at the meeting in England's second city.
"We came back to that twice. Once in relation to international crime using computers
and we came back this morning to make sure that we will all be together on the first of
January 2000," Chretien told reporters.
The G8 communique said the world's most powerful leaders had also agreed to
implement rapidly an action plan on high tech crime put forward at the G8 foreign and
G7 finance ministers meeting held last weekend in London.
Chretien said the leaders recognised that heading off the so-called "millennium bug" will
be an expensive prospect, but that it was necessary to avoid disaster.
"Otherwise it could jeopardise trade and communications around the world," he said.
Computers are exposed to a problem that sounds almost too trivial to be true. In the
1970s and 1980s, computer programmers saved what was then valuable space
abbreviating years to two digits - like 97 or 85 - knowing that this would cause mayhem
in the year 2000. Computers would be unable to make sense of a four digit number and
would crash or start pumping out erroneous data.
But because of the torrid pace of the growth in technology it was widely assumed that
the problem would be addressed many years before the year 2000 dawned.
This assumption has proved false and companies and governments around the world are
scrambling to fix the problem.
If widespread computer breakdown were to occur millions of people dependent on
state funds could find themselves without money and public utilities could leave whole
populations stranded without water or power.
In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, chief economist at merchant bankers
Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, Edward Yardeni, said there was a 60 percent chance of a
recession because of the computer bomb, with the possibility of a depression.
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