Millennium timebomb warning to public services

Computer chaos threatens public service industries who are lagging behind

Industry is lagging behind in the battle to beat the Millennium bug - and public services are the worst culprit.

That is the view of Action 2000, set up by the government to help industry avoid computer chaos on January 1, 2000.

"Hardly any organisation is ready now," said chairman Don Cruickshank.

"It is clear that typically the public services are lagging behind the private sector. There is a lag of about nine months."

Don Cruickshank: hardly any organisation is ready

His comments came as Action 2000 unveiled a new initiative to ensure that public services, including health and emergency services, do not fail because of the millennium bug.

The bug is caused by computers using only two figures to identify the date, with 1998 shown simply as 98. Such systems will see the year 2000 as 00 and may confuse the date with 1900, or crash altogether.

Action 2000 plans to establish a comprehensive view of public service readiness and has drafted a Code of Conduct explaining what such organisations should disclose to each other about their computers.

Legal threats

To complete the survey of public service computers and the bug, three working parties will be set up.

The first will represent leading utilities such as water and electricity together with their industry regulators. The second will comprise bosses from the health service and financial sector while key representatives from private sector companies that depend on public services will form a third.

Mr Cruickshank warned a major obstacle to progress was a storm of legal threats regarding the bug.

He said too many organisations were firing off legal letters to companies with which they do business asking whether their computers were fixed for the year 2000 and threatening legal action if their systems failed.

The target of such letters were typically smaller businesses, he said, but they were often counter-productive, making organisations more and more secretive.

"Call off the lawyers on the smaller businesses," said Mr Cruickshank, arguing the "useless paper chase" was hindering rather than helping the problem.

Bank Holiday bonanza

Meanwhile, Culture Secretary Chris Smith has announced that New Year's Eve 1999 will be a Bank Holiday so Britons can see in the new Millennium with a four-day break.

The extra holiday will fall on Friday, December 31 while Monday will remain the New Year's Day holiday, giving party-goers four days to mark the event.

Mr Smith said: "I know that large number of people will welcome this opportunity to prepare for the festivities on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day 2000."

With Christmas Day and Boxing Day also falling at a weekend, pushing more Bank Holidays into the week, it means there will be only two working days between December 24 and January 4.