Ireland: 'The Year 2000 Problem
"The advent of the Year 2000 brings with it a threat which if ignored any longer, could have very serious
implications for the future of YOUR BUSINESS. This conference is designed to inform the Business Community
on how to tackle this very serious problem." Noel Treacy
National Conference
The Taoiseach (Prime Minister) will address a National Conference on the Year 2000
Computer Problem, O'Reilly Hall, UCD, Belfield on 9th September 1998.
THE CONFERENCE COMMENCES AT 1:45 p.m.
Agenda
Welcoming Address Dr. Art Cosgrove, President, UCD
Keynote Speech An Taoiseach, Mr. Bertie Ahern, T,D
Other Speakers Mr. Chris Moore, IBM Y2K Executive for Western Europe
Mr. Liam Kelly, Irish Computer Society
Concluding Remarks
Q&A Session
Minister for Science, Technology & Commerce Mr. Noel Treacy, T.D.
Department of Enterprise Trade & Employment
For further details contact information Office Tel: 661 4444; Ext: 3132, 3194 or 3227
Lo-Call telephone service if calling from outside (01) area) - 1890 220222.
Open letter to An Taoiseach, Mr. Bertie Ahern
T.D.
In advance of his address to the National Conference on the Year 2000 computer problem, at UCD on 9
September 1998.
Dear Taoiseach,
Your words on this occasion will be listened to, not just in Ireland, but across the world, as our international trading
partners look to hear what Ireland is doing about the computer problems arising over the next two years. President
Clinton recently commented that 'a number of countries had literally only begun just to think about the problem';
meaning that what has happened to us with the rouble is only a foretaste of what is to come.
Tony Blair committed œ97 million to Y2K on March 30, 1998. Assuming Ireland is about 5% of the size of the
UK, I therefore call upon you to commit:
ú œ0.5M on overseas aid;
ú œ3.5M on training grants for companies and advisors;
ú œ1M on awareness funding, like Action 2000.
President Clinton, in his speech on Y2K at the National Academy of Sciences, July 14, 1998 said: "I have made it
clear to every member of my Cabinet that the American people have a right to expect uninterrupted service from
government and I expect them to deliver." These are fine words, and while I hope you use similar ones,
management by edict is a classic mistake. The management of Hong Kong's new airport discovered that when they
tried to order it open before the computer systems work was complete. Work will take the time and resources it
needs, and ordering otherwise is meaningless. To make that real, you need to not only nominate people, but to give
them the authority, responsibility and funding to do the job that all informed experts know needs to be done. I call
upon you to nominate a team who will be contact points for national Y2K progress monitoring, so people can
make their contingency plans appropriately. Lacking knowledge, people have to assume the worst, which may lead
to unnecessary expense.
You will no doubt mention the inter-departmental monitoring committee set up to review national progress. I call
upon you to apply the Freedom Of Information act, and allow citizens to see how our nation's risks are being
managed, outside the gag of cabinet confidentiality.
I call upon all legislators to consider their responsibility.
The US Justice Department stated that competitors who merely share information on how to solve this problem are
not in violation of the nation's anti-trust laws. President Clinton said: "I will propose good Samaritan legislation to
guarantee that businesses which share information about their readiness with the public or with each other, and do it
honestly and carefully, cannot be held liable for the exchange of that information if it turns out to be inaccurate. " I
call on you to pass similar legislation here. Action 2000 in the UK has a Pledge 2000 to similar effect, and other
law companies propose a "Compliance Co-operation Protocol" and a "Millennium Moratorium".
I call upon you to state that no new legislation shall be enacted which requires computer systems changes, to
reserve resources to work on the Year 2000 problems.
It may not be fair to expect you to mention individual departments in your address. But consider that your voters
will want to know -
ú Will we get hospital treatment safely, given that the Department of Health has not approved the funding
administrators have requested?
ú Will the social services continue to function?
ú Will we have telephones, radio, television, power, gas, transport, and clean water?
ú Will we have jobs?
Please - announce real action, real budgets, real people - now.
Yours sincerely,
Patrick O'Beirne
Patrick O'Beirne, B.Sc, M.A. (Systems), MICS
Systems Modelling Ltd. Tara Hill, Gorey, Co. Wexford
Tel 055-22294 Fax 055-22297 Email pobeirne@sysmod.ie
Web URL : iol.ie
Comment for media readers.
Internationally, the news is grim. Ed Yourdon comments: "Y2K did make it onto the final communiqu‚ of the
meeting of G8 ministers; but it was at the bottom of the list. There was an agreement to hold a Y2K Summit in
Russia sometime this fall, but the G8 group couldn't even agree on when the meeting would be held. South America
and Africa are essentially doomed, in terms of repairing their Y2K problems. President Clinton commented that 'a
number of countries had literally only begun just to think about the problem'; what that means, in simple English, is
that they won't finish. The fundamental reason that most software projects finish late is that they start late; if a
company or a country did not begin serious work on Y2K by 1995, the chances of it finishing in time are close to
zero." What has happened to us with the rouble is a foretaste of what is to come. For a detailed comment by Ed
Yourdon on president Clinton's speech of July 14, see
yourdon.com
In my frequent correspondence to government departments, I have asked for disclosure of state progress and the
mobilising of agencies to help businesses and local authorities face up to this problem. Specifically, I have called
for:
1. A national risk assessment must be carried out and reported by October 1998 of a review of exposures from
failures in important manufacturing process industries and highly computer-dependent service sectors, national
infrastructures, trade with other nations and contingency planning.
2. Co-ordination of chief executives and engineering project managers of public bodies such as ESB, Telecom,
Bord Gais, City corporations, emergency services, etc.; to plan and test that our national infrastructure will still
work into and beyond the year 2000
3. Quarterly progress reports of government department progress, showing the number of systems to be fixed,
those in progress, and those completed. Numbers, not vague "working on it" statements. The Congressional
oversight committee chaired by Representative Horn has been saying for over a year that the US government will
not finish repairing more than 2/3 of its mission-critical systems, and that some of the agencies might not finish their
work until the year 2019. The reports of our interdepartmental monitoring committee are private to the government
- no freedom of information there.
4. Forbairt or County Enterprise Boards should train business assessors. These are already the business advisors in
their area, so they should learn the assessment process in less than a week, it's not rocket science.
5. I recommend the setting up of local user groups, and the "mentoring" approach of initiatives like Plato. Enough
big companies should be far enough on that the Y2K project managers can not only assist their smaller suppliers
and customers, the more public-spirited ones can take their expertise into the community through the Chambers of
Commerce.
It may seem surprising that government should be telling business to act in self-preservation, but people are so
fixated on today's problems that the Year 2000 seems very far off. You have to look at the car "scrappage
scheme" to see how government needs to lead people to do the right thing. In the interests of continuity, leadership
is needed now.
Finally, it is interesting that this event is hosted at UCD. Ed Yourdon, the US software management consultant,
notes that "the faculty, administration, and students at MIT are oblivious to the Y2K problem, and refuse to get
involved in it because it appears intellectually trivial and academically boring. The same embarrassing lack of
attention can be found at Stanford and Cal Tech and Carnegie Mellon and most of the other universities that should
be providing intellectual expertise to attack this problem. By and large, the universities should hang their collective
heads in shame, for it will be too late for them to do anything about the problem by the time it explodes next year;
the final irony is that the universities themselves are unprepared for the problems they will face, and they may well
be forced to shut down for the spring semester of 2000."
You can find more reports on Year 2000 in Ireland by searching the archives at the Irish Times.
Back to Year 2000 page
iol.ie |
