Stock up on oil olive NOW! gang--
"No one is listening to us" ( Romano Oneda, the education expert on Italy's
Year 2000 Committee)
THE TIMES
May 14 1999 EUROPE
Tardy nation invites chaos at millennium celebrations
BY RICHARD OWEN
OFFICIALS given the task of ridding Italy of the millennium bug issued a
warning yesterday that, with just over seven months to the deadline, a
promised £2 million budget had yet to be approved by parliament - and they
still had no powers to force companies and government departments to comply.
"Italy is going to crash, and we are going to be crucified," Romano Oneda,
the education expert on Italy's Year 2000 Committee, said. "We are supposed
to make things go so smoothly that nobody would realise there was ever a
problem. Instead we will be the scapegoats. We have only consultative
powers, and no one is listening to us."
Roberto Di Martino, a computer software expert on the committee, said "even
now no executive wants to tell his company they have to spend both time and
money on this". Augusto Leggio, whose task is to persuade the transport and
telecommunications sectors to face up to Y2K, said the problem was "so vast
there is no point in getting hysterical". He said the Interior Ministry,
which controls police and immigration services, hoped to guarantee most
essential services by the end of this year, but would not be fully compliant
until July 2000. "I don't think they have quite grasped what this is all
about," one official said.
Planners in Italy and Vatican City are only now beginning to realise that
they face a nightmare. The tourist industry is losing millions of pounds
because of the Balkans war, and it is feared that many planning to see in
the Holy Year in the Eternal City will go elsewhere because of Y2K.
"Imagine the dawn of the new millennium", said Il Messaggero, the Rome
daily. "Twenty six million people have come to the Eternal City. But traffic
lights and automatic banking machines are out of order, the airport is in
chaos, food and water are running out. There could be panic and disorder."
The Government has, belatedly, begun broadcasting radio advertisements
explaining that the bug affects any system storing the year as two digits
rather than four.
According to one survey, only 2 per cent of Italians have heard of the
problem. The Y2K campaign has been put in the hands of Professor Ernesto
Bettinelli, an energetic former junior Minister for Public Administration.
But he continues to teach constitutional law at Padua University while
running the committee, which started work in February. It has been allotted
Ministry of Tourism rooms, with a staff of six, three telephones and one
secretary, and draws on the unpaid services of 22 experts in such fields as
banking, traffic control and food distribution.
Professor Bettinelli said: "It is rather like Italy's experience with
qualifying for the euro. Italy often starts late and then makes up for lost
time with bursts of acceleration." Others are less sanguine. "If you have to
choose a day to be ill, fly on an airplane or get in a lift, avoid Italy on
December 31," said La Repubblica. General Natalino Lecca, the professor's
right-hand man, admits the country was a "relatively late starter" in
computerising offices and services. "But this could be an advantage; it
means we have fewer older-generation computers infected by the bug." He also
sees an advantage in Italy's family-owned food stores, which mostly "still
do everything by hand".
But Valeria Severini, an economist, said the dangers were being
underestimated. "Fiat's computer system went down for six days recently,
even though they had spent £50 million on a debugging programme." She
predicted a big fall in industrial production next year.
The bureaucracy is grinding to a halt, social security and pension payments
being made by hand. Many hospitals have taken little or no action. But some
point out that Italian life is already "organised chaos", so if urban
support systems collapse, no one will notice. Said Beppe Severgnini of
Corriere della Sera: "We have a gift for transforming any crisis into one
big party."
Mama mia!!! |
