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Technology Stocks : Discuss Year 2000 Issues -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Mansfield who wrote (2829)	11/21/1998 5:52:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9818

'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. computerweekly.co.uk

To: John Mansfield who wrote (2829)	11/22/1998 8:09:00 AM
From: John Mansfield	Respond to of 9818

'IG hits DOD on Y2K The Defense Department is failing to take the necessary steps to minimize the impact of the Year 2000 crisis on operations, according to internal reports released over the past month by the DOD Inspector General. An abstract of a classified report on base communications systems shows that "of 268 telecommunications switches identified by DOD components as Y2K-compliant, 131 will not be compliant by the [Office of Management and Budget] March 1999 deadline." The IG also reported that the Pacific Command had not developed a complete inventory of all facility infrastructure systems and equipment and is therefore "unable to assess the magnitude of its Y2K problem." According to another report on the Defense Technology and Security Agency, DTSA "did not complete Y2K compliance checklists for any systems that it owned and maintained...because it was not knowledgeable of the DOD management plan." fcw.com