The year 2000--computer compliance : second report. Volume II, Minutes of evidence and appendices / Science and Technology Committee.
- Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Select Committee on Science and Technology
- Date:
- 1998
Licence: Open Government Licence
Credit: The year 2000--computer compliance : second report. Volume II, Minutes of evidence and appendices / Science and Technology Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![[Chairman Cont] 2000 for banking and insurance but, more importantly, for hospitals, air traffic control, emergency services, pensions and so on? (Mr Guenier) I think the two are interesting to compare. The City of London, the financial community, by and large have seen this problem coming for some time. They have set themselves up to deal with it. They have very substantial budgets. For example, the four main clearing banks, broadly speaking, have a combined budget of about £400 million and one’s knowledge of computing is that that will probably go up. So we may be looking at half a billion just for the four clearing banks. Generally speaking, therefore, we are looking at very large budgets and a lot of activity in the City of London and in the financial community generally. That does not mean that they are exempt from problems or that there is no risk. I think there is some risk in the banking community and I am somewhat fearful of that, but it is a very much lesser risk than the risk we see elsewhere in the economy. You mentioned in particular the national health service and air traffic control systems. Air Traffic Control again have recognised this for some time and they are reasonably confident, not certain but reasonably confident, that their systems will be ready, at least in this country and in Western Europe and in North America. That does not mean they will be elsewhere in the world, of course. One thing I am very concerned about—and I will come back to my point about resources—is that there is inadequate resource to deal with this. Therefore, if these people, such as the City of London, such as Air Traffic Control, in fact absorb all the available resource, or a very high percentage of it, particularly from _ specialist consultants who are needed to help, I fear very much who is going to help the national health service. The point we have made in our submission is the need for prioritisation. It does seem to me there is a great danger that those who can afford it and those who saw it coming a long time ago are quite sensibly getting on with it and trying to do everything, and the very fact that they are doing that could damage parts of the economy, particularly in the public sector. Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. I think we shall come back to skill shortage in a few moments. May I now ask Mr Atkinson if he will lead us on to awareness and readiness for this date. Mr Atkinson 6. Thank you, Mr Chairman. I have three separate questions. First of all, because most of us are laymen around this table, can you tell us very briefly, in understandable terms, precisely what would happen to British business if very little action were to be taken, and what is the action needed to be taken to avoid some of the problems which are being predicted if action is not taken? (Mr Guenier) Could I invite my colleague Ian Hugo to deal with that. (Mr Hugo) What will happen if no action is taken is that 80 per cent of computer systems of all kinds will fail. That is the general percentage of programmes that are affected that the large organisations who are into this problem have found, and something between 10 and 30 per cent of embedded systems will fail in one way or another. So that is what will happen if no action is taken. You asked earlier about deadlines. 7. The action needed to be taken? (Mr Hugo) The action that needs to be taken, there is a process that is quite well-known, which is to establish an inventory of systems that may be affected, to carry out an impact analysis of those systems to see if and where they are affected, and then to decide on some process for either fixing the system as it stands or replacing it or, indeed, scrapping it if it is not essential to the business. When all these fixes have been made, as I say to 80 per cent of the systems typically within the company, all the modified programmes then have to be tested where they react together as an assembly. They then have to be put back into production in the company and tested again in the production environment. So there is a fairly long process and the key, I think, is that never before have any companies attempted to disassemble all their systems, correct them, and re-assemble them in such a short space of time. 8. When Taskforce 2000 was appointed last year, Mr Guenier, I think you said you would not be content unless there were 100 per cent awareness achieved within a year or so of the establishment, and as a year has now gone by, can you give us a measure as to whether you have achieved both 100 per cent awareness by British business of the problem and also a measure of the action that has been taken, the progress that has been made? (Mr Guenier) I will give you a brief answer and then ask Rob Wirszycz to comment as well. Our original target was to achieve 100 per cent awareness at board level by March of this year. The problem, of course, is, what does awareness mean, and I think that problem has got in the way of some understanding of this issue anyway. But superficially I think we have, broadly speaking, achieved that. I think levels of awareness in the United Kingdom, according to most of the surveys we look at, are very high and were high by March, and in fact are very much higher probably than in any other country in the world, and we can be quite proud of that. On the other hand, in terms of understanding what the issue really is about, I think we have not succeeded at all. I suppose that is an exaggeration. We have succeeded to a degree but I think there is a very large measure of misunderstanding. I make presentations, four or five a week—I made two in Edgbaston this morning—and everybody who comes to these presentations knows there is a problem and so they are aware of it but hardly any understand the issues and they go away rather shaken when they find out what this is about. So yes, we have been successful superficially. Iam pleased about that but we have not really been very successful when it comes down to really understanding it. (Mr Wirszycz) I think there is one area of misunderstanding which actually comes from the name which is often given to this issue, which is “the year 2000 problem”. In reality it is a 1999 problem because you cannot wait until the last minute, which is what most people do for the majority of their business projects, because the use of year 2000- related dates and processing will occur well before the year 2000. It is already occurring and we are](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32218692_0015.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
