India Sees Vital Y2K Compliance By End Of October

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India Sees Vital Y2K Compliance By End Of October

Updated 5:55 AM ET September 1, 1999

By Narayanan Madhavan

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's critical government departments and utilities will achieve compliance for the Year 2000 bug in their computer systems by the end of October, the chief supervisor of the project said Wednesday.

Montek Singh Ahluwalia, chairman of the Y2K Action Force set up by the government last year, said his panel had thoroughly reviewed seven of the 11 critical areas and the others were expected to be examined in coming days.

"Very broadly, most of these departments are indicating to us that they will achieve Y2K compliance, by which I mean all those steps including a contingency plan ready, including an external certification that the rectification is complete, somewhere between end-September and end-October," Ahluwalia said.

He was speaking at a national conference on Y2K preparedness organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

Ahluwalia identified atomic energy, civil aviation, insurance, banking, power, ports, defense, petroleum, railways, space and telecommunications as the 11 critical areas among the 65 government departments being examined by the action force.

He said "99.9 percent of what I have seen so far in these departments indicates that by end of October, and most of them by end of September, will be declaring a published compliance date."

Banking and insurance are among the remaining areas where the action force is yet to carry out comprehensive reviews.

The Y2K problem, also called the Millennium Bug, can arise in old-generation computers that use only the last two digits to denote a year in their date-fields. Unless rectified, the bug can cause data crashes and consequent complications when the next year dawns.

Ahluwalia said key government departments were presenting the action force with details on problem identification, inventories, rectification steps, internal auditing and contingency plans.

"Each department is submitting to us very detailed assessments on what they have done in each of the five areas," he said.

He said the Department of Telecommunications and overseas telecoms firm Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd will be compliant by the end of September, the petroleum sector had no compliance problems and the space program had a multi-layered action plan to tackle the Y2K bug.

Aviation authorities had worked out compliance measures, contingency plans and advisory services, he said.

"The maximum amount of capacity which could be affected in the country is six percent," he said, adding that the National Informatics Center (NIC) was undertaking special Y2K audits in these plants, and contingency fuel stocks would be available for emergencies.

Narasimhaiah Seshagiri, a member of the action force and director-general of the NIC, said "92 percent of the power sector is already safe."

In the telecoms sector, state-run units were being driven by their multinational vendors to ensure compliance, he said.

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What the heck, that gives them a couple of months to make Ghee!!

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), September 01, 1999


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