TECHNOLOGY-MIDDLE EAST/MAGHREB: Readying For The Year 2000

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Nizar al-Ali and Deborah Horan

RABAT/JERUSALEM, May 8 1998 (IPS) - Jan. 1, 2000 could be a sad Saturday for the world. Experts warn of a potential computer collapse that could wreak havoc unless trained experts get to work now to weed out the ‘millenium bugs’ in their systems.

A quirk of programming replicated down the years in chips and program ‘source code’ means that untreated computers will read the year 2000 as the year 1900.

“You’ll go to the bank with a cheque that’s printed 00 because there’s no way to print 2000, and they’ll say, ‘Sorry, cheques are only good for six months. This one is dated the year of Christ’s birth’,” says Jim Lederman, author of numerous books abou t Israel’s economy and high tech industry.

“We are running out of time in terms of the reprogramming of computers. We have only 20 months left for planning and reviewing the implications and strategy,” said Saudi minister of finance Ibrahim al-Assaf, addressing a top level seminar at King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia last month.

But the experts needed to sort out the problem before Dec. 31, 1999 are in short supply everywhere — and no more so than in the Middle East, Maghreb and Israel.

In Morocco, the most optimistic spin on the problem is to read the country’s lack of development in the computer sector as an advantage. Mohamed ben Muchri, a computer engineer for a private firm in Casablanca, believes the problem will be more serious i n developed countries which rely to a larger extent on computers.

“Morocco lags well behind in this field, and that is why the problem is less alarming,” he told IPS. Similarly Moroccan Telecoms Ittissalat al-Maghrib say they use relatively recent computers which take into account the shift to the year 2000.

They also credit a sophisticated management system for the company’s phone subscribers, dubbed ‘Insijam’ (harmony). But though they say Morocco is the first African country to develop such response to the 2000 problem, they will not discuss details.

The change of date will have most serious consequences for technology-dependent sectors, such as banking, insurance, and state-owned firms and administrations. “For sure there is no bank that is not doing whatever is needed,” says Amiram Shore of MLL S oftware and Computers in Tel Aviv.

“It is a problem, but it is mainly time-consuming. It can (be easily fixed) if they (the company) will pay attention. Otherwise, they may be with a problem. The question is when they are starting to (fix it).”

Moulay Boucheta, chief engineer at a Rabat-based public enterprise, told IPS that the Moroccan authorities had yet to begin seriously planning how to address the problem. “If the authorities do not budge now, the wake-up on Jan. 1, 2000 will be one of t he most bitter ones.”

“We’ve instructed each bank to solve their own problem.” says Gaby Fiszman, spokesman for the central Bank of Israel. “The controller of the banks ordered the banks to check their computer systems. Otherwise it could be a credit risk.

“But if a bank gave credit to a big client which suffers from this problem, maybe the bank would suffer financially. We leave this to the banks.

In Morocco, telecommunications secretary of state, M. Larbi Aajoul says “each administration or establishment is pondering on the problem at its own level.” But he also admits that “this means dissipated efforts and scattered initiatives pending the b ig splash”.

He promised his own department would shortly announce a “clear strategy”. Richer firms are already buying in foreign expertise, says a computer engineer at the Moroccan private corporation Omnium Nord Africain, the country’s largest.

The costs are potentially huge. “It depends on the size of the package,” says Shore. “You have to evaluate the size of the problem. It will cost average of one dollar per line of source code — every line to check and adjust will cost a dollar.”

Some programmes for major corporations run to millions of lines of code. An August 1997 study by U.S. analysts Killen & Associates estimated that 280 billion dollars would be spent on the problem worldwide between 1997-2002.

Fifty-two percent of this money would be spent in North America, 28 percent in Europe, 17 percent in Asia, two percent in Latin America — and one percent in Africa and the Middle East.

Some computer failures could be life-threatening. THe Moroccan state airline Royale Air Maroc has been working on the problem since 1996. The airline plans to upgrade its central computers over three months at a cost of one million dollars.

Aviation experts led by John Virmilye, who heads the International Air Transport Association (IATA) 2000 Project, are touring the region to meet officials. “Airports and air traffic controllers need to be aware of the problem and their responsibilities, ” he said in Dubai recently.

He worries that the so-called ‘millennium bug’ may disrupt computers used to operate traffic control radar, aircraft in flight systems, cargo and baggage routing, personnel records and other aviation industry services.

“Most airports are run by governments and some by the military. So we do not have easy access to their systems because certain diplomatic requirements are needed to open the doors,” Virmilye said in Dubai last month, according to the Gulf News.

Some Arab states are ahead of the game. In Bahrain the state social services agency (GOSI) has just finished its year 2000 conversion after 13 months.

“During December 1996-January 1998, more than 1,200 applications were copied and modified to comply for 2000,” GOSI information technology director Yousuf Ahmed Dashkouni told Gulf media. “The organisation’s huge database has also been copied and modi fied so that they could be based on four-digit numbers rather than two.”

Dashkouni said the new system would run in parallel with the old system, starting from July. ‘This means we will be able to cope with the transition from 1999 to 2000 without any major problem,’ he said.

“All the country and all the business people are aware of this problem,” says Shore. “Most of the big companies and corporations are already investing money and attention.

“Even the (Israeli) government has decided that they are now putting all their energy in adjusting the software packages and programs and even delaying development of systems until they finish the year 2000 project.”