Reuters: Blips But No Doom From Australia Y2K

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http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991109/tc/yk_australia_1.html

Blips But No Doom From Australia Y2K By Ruth Pitchford

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia's millennium bug doomsayers face disappointment on January 1, 2000, although people should be on the lookout for minor blips, the official in charge of Y2K preparations said on Tuesday.

But Graeme Inchley added that when disaster scenarios fail to materialize and food, water, cash, power, telecommunications and transport are all available as normal people should not relax too much.

Inchley, chief executive of the government's Y2K taskforce, expects the reality to be more tedious than dramatic as businesses resolve isolated problems in lower-profile technology over the first few months of the new millennium.

``If there are disruptions, they won't be to do with food, water or power in Hollywood disaster movie style,'' Inchley said in an interview.

``The thing to focus on is much more to do with the effects of Y2K on business efficiency.''

International surveys show Australia among the world's front runners in tackling the 'millennium bug', or Y2K, which occurs because older computers -- which allocated only two digits for the year in the date -- may read 2000 as 1900, causing systems to make mistakes or shut down.

Inchley says utilities in Australia will face no greater risk of disruption than normal on January 1, while major banks have made intensive preparations, including backing up records and having extra cash available to meet panic demand.

Residual Y2k Risks Mundane

The residual risks are much more mundane -- a local business losing track of who has paid its bills, or an order placed over the Internet that fails to get delivered, he added.

Inchley said the average Australian would do better to keep receipts or print out Internet transactions rather than stockpile food or cash, which he was confident would be readily available.

He cautioned that businesses should stay alert for slow-to-emerge problems in technology such as cutting-edge inventory management systems which have played a major role in holding down business costs in the past decade.

Post-Christmas restocking orders could fall foul of the bug without anyone noticing until the delivery fails to arrive, Inchley said.

Many batch processing systems -- notably payroll technology -- are used maybe once a month will face their first live tests several days or weeks into the new year.

Inchley plans to work on through January and February to seek information from firms to check whether system glitches are more common than usual.

Australian businesses are estimated to have spent around A$10 billion (US$6.5 billion) on Y2K preparations.

``If it's as I predict the problem will be manageable,'' Inchley said.

-- Ken Decker (kcdecker@worldnet.att.net), November 09, 1999

Answers

Thanks, Ken, for posting these articles to balance out the picture for us.

-- SH (squirrel@hunter.com), November 09, 1999.

Another government spin -- this one from Australia.

"Inchley said the average Australian would do better to keep receipts or print out Internet transactions rather than stockpile food or cash, which he was confident would be readily available."

Make sure those receipts are printed on a rice paper -- it is better digestible. Mr. Decker, could you please find in this article what makes Mr. Inchley so confident that food and cash would be readily available. I would like to find out what does he know.

-- Brooklyn (MSIS@cyberdude.com), November 09, 1999.


These kinds of articles have become the "politically correct" thing to say. If you really try, you could probably find dozens of them each week. At the present time, private companies and governments see that it is their best interest to say that the problems will be minor. If I were in their position at this late date, perhaps I would do the same thing and hope for the best.

-- Dave (dannco@hotmail.com), November 09, 1999.

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