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Technology Stocks : Y2K (Year 2000) Stocks: An Investment Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hoatzin who wrote (9999)	3/11/1998 10:18:00 AM
From: Jeffery E. Forrest	Respond to of 13949

It's too late to fix it, says Y2K bug chief By Stan Beer The Government has run out of time to fix its year 2000 problems and will not be prepared by January 1, 2000, according to the head of its millennium bug awareness program. Mr Graeme Inchley, CEO of the Government's Year 2000 initiative, also predicted the computer problems caused by the change of century could easily translate into widespread small business failures -- and possibly even trigger an economic recession. In an interview yesterday, Mr Inchley said the best Canberra could hope for was to fix its most critical systems and put up "work arounds" for the others. "The Government is going through an assessment of its areas of greatest risk and will have to move very quickly in order to at least be able to operate by 2000," he said. "There will be areas of Government that will not be year 2000 compliant and we need to be prepared to put work arounds in place. This is a very serious problem indeed." Mr Inchley also named personal computer systems as an area of concern. "There are about 10 million PCs in Australia and if only 5 per cent of them fail to operate on January 1, 2000, then we will have a major problem," he said. He warned that the 2000 bug would also translate into a broader economic setback for Australia because of the heavy dependence of small businesses on PCs. "It only takes 10 per cent of Australia's small businesses to fold at one time to bring on a recession. There is a strong possibility that the figure will be much greater than 10 per cent because of the failure of small business to act. We're not just talking recession but major economic meltdown." Mr Inchley said he agreed with the assessment of the chief economist of Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, Dr Ed Yardini, who has predicted the chances of global recession brought on by the year 2000 problem are greater than 40 per cent. Mr Inchley said the Government had no idea yet how much its year 2000 spend was going to be. But he believed the figure of $3 billion quoted recently by Coopers & Lybrand consultant, Mr Mike Bridges, was a realistic estimate. According to Mr Inchley, big businesses have also run out of time to fix their year 2000 problems if they do not already have comprehensive programs in place. He said in the next three months he expected to begin naming specific industries which would not be year 2000 ready. "I will include major Government departments in those assessments," he said.