'Year 2000 noose tightens round
Government's neck
Reports by Taskforce 2000, the Audit Commission
and Cap Gemini all paint a grim picture of public
sector date bug preparations. Bill Goodwin reports
The government has run out of time to prevent the
millennium bug striking the heart of its operations.
Unless government departments begin to treat the year
2000 problem as a national emergency, essential
services are in danger of grinding to a halt.
This stark warning comes from an analysis of the
government's own published data on its year 2000
progress. Compiled by pressure group Taskforce 2000,
it paints a gloomy picture of the government's
millennium bug preparations.
"The public sector is in trouble," said Robin Guenier,
head of Taskforce 2000, last week. "Government is still
struggling to come to terms with the size of the task it
faces."
All government departments have left it desperately
late to take action, and even the best do not come
close to the level of good practice achieved by the
private sector, claims Taskforce 2000's damning report.
Its findings were backed up last week by the latest half
yearly survey from computer services company Cap
Gemini. The company's millennium index shows that the
poor performance of the public sector over the past six
months has led to Britain losing its place among the
seven countries most prepared for the bug.
The problem, says Taskforce 2000, is that with time
running out, most government departments have left it
too late to complete adequate testing programmes. In
most cases government departments are not even
contemplating end-to-end testing of their services.
This could be a serious omission. Correcting the date
bugs in software may be straightforward, but
experience in the private sector has shown that the
corrections often introduce other errors which can only
be identified by thorough testing.
Government departments will probably avoid major
failures, but a series of repeated minor failures is likely
to bring normal government services grinding to a halt,
the Taskforce 2000 report warns.
Those on the danger list include the Department of
Trade & Industry, the Foreign Office, the Home Office,
and the Ministry of Defence.
Some local authorities, the emergency services and
local councils are also lagging dangerously behind,
claims last week's report from the Audit Commission.
The smaller district councils in particular have failed to
make strong headway in tackling the bug over the past
six months. Key public services, such as housing,
environmental health and benefit payments, are
potentially at risk.
The larger authorities, NHS trusts as well as the
emergency services are treating the bug more seriously
but, despite its optimistic tone, the Audit Commission's
report shows that only a small number have yet to
match the commission's benchmark targets.
One in four local authorities have yet to complete their
equipment inventories. One in three have yet to begin
requesting compliance information from their suppliers
and two out of five have yet to start contingency
planning.
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