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To: Runner who wrote (24668)	11/9/1998 1:25:00 PM
From: airborn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 31646

Some Food for thought. Y2K problems may be closer then we think! ANNES, France (Reuters) -- European governments are failing to protect their citizens against fallout from the millennium computer bomb, and the consequences of their inactions are likely to start at the end of this year in hospitals and welfare systems, a conference was told Tuesday. "European governments and public sector organizations have only spent between 5 and 10 percent of what it needs to fix their systems," Gartner Group analyst Andy Kyte told a press briefing. The governments of the Netherlands, Sweden and Ireland escaped censure from Gartner, a U.S. research organization. Washington's actions have also failed to impress Gartner. According to Kyte, European governments are dependent on large scale computer systems to dispense welfare and run public institutions. "The public sector is the biggest danger here. They're not doing the work at all," he told Reuters. Kyte was speaking at Gartner's annual European conference, called Symposium ITxpo98. Experts believe that many computers may crash at midnight on Dec. 31, 1999, because they use double digit dates like 97 and 98. Computers controlling operations such as payroll or pensions may die or spew out erroneous data when faced with the double zeros of the year 2000. Businesses and governments around the world have been cranking up efforts to solve the problem before time runs out. But Kyte explained that many computer systems that deal with dates often run operations where they need to refer 12 months ahead -- meaning that many computers will start to fail on Dec. 31, 1998. "The millennium computer problem is going to start manifesting itself as we cross into 1999. There will also be clusters of problems at key dates like the end of the first quarter," another Gartner analyst, Matthew Hotle, told the briefing. Kyte said European governments were saying plenty but doing little. "Hospitals, government procurement, defense procurement, welfare, are areas where we'll see disruption from the end of this year. The Dutch, Swedes and the Irish have done a good job, but very few European governments can stand up to scrutiny. They've been saying a lot but not really doing much," Kyte said. "The Federal government in the U.S. has not done a great job either, but at least it has been open about it," he said.