DEVELOPMENT: Experts See Minimal Disruption from Y2K Bug

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 23 1999 (IPS) - Experts gathered here for a conference on the Year 2000 (or ‘Y2K’) computer bug agree on two things: the bug could cause some glitches when the new year dawns, but they aren’t likely to be major ones.

Ahmad Kamal, Pakistan’s UN ambassador and head of a UN committee on informatics, said as the three-day meeting kicked off Tuesday that the world’s nations have improved their cooperation in recent months in combatting the computer bug.

“We know that we will not be totally compliant at the end of the year,” Kamal said. “But we also know that there will not be any major disruptions, because the problems have been identified.”

Even the size of this week’s meeting – with 173 governments in attendance – is a sign of the amount of cooperation nations have provided in coming to grips with any possible computer snags, he said.

Governments are trying to formulate ways at the United Nations this week to prepare for any technological problems when computerised systems trained to read a two-digit date code (such as ’67’ for 1967) are confronted with the new millennium.

In essence, the Y2K glitch concerns the potential for those systems – and for embedded microchips present in everything from computers and nuclear weapons to electrical networks and cars – to misread the year 2000 (or ’00’ in the two-digit system) as the year 1900, and to function improperly as a result.

After months of testing to determine whether some systems are adequately prepared to withstand the bug, many key areas are now believed to be low-risk ones, experts contend.

Among them, said Bruce McConnell, director of the International Y2K Cooperation Centre, is nuclear energy and weaponry, which has been the subject of so much study that “we do not see it as a high-risk area.”

On Tuesday, Russia announced that it would complete Y2K testing of its nuclear power plants by Sep. 1, McConnell noted.

Simlarly, Kamal said, great attention has been paid to reducing the risk of any disruptive glitches in world financial networks and in civil aviation.

Although the Montreal-based International Civil Aviation Organisation has been working to deal with any problems stemming from embedded chips in airplanes and control towers, Kamal warned that there still was “some doubt” about airplane safety.

Larger problems also may occur in other sectors that have garnered less attention, including food storage, shipping, water and energy.

The worst effects are expected to be seen in the developing world, which has less funding and technical capacity to perform the necessary debugging procedures over the next six months, Kamal said.

During the Tuesday meeting, Central American and Caribbean nations drew particular attention to the vulnerability of developing countries to any disruptions in shipping, which in turn could hinder food exports and damage regional economies.

Mario Tagarinski, chairman of the Government Council on Y2K Conversion in Bulgaria, said that Eastern Europe’s main concern was the possibility of glitches in the energy sector.

“We are working very hard concerning (developing) individual assessments” of the need to debug regional power plants, he said.

Even as the effort to find all embedded chips and debug them proceeds, experts have devised various fallbacks in case any millennial computer snags result in significant problems.

Chief among them, McConnell noted, was the international volunteer service, the Y2K Expert Service (YES), which was ready to provide technical assistance to any countries seeking to be Y2K- ready in the coming months. Some 18 countries already had sought assistance from YES, he said.

John Koskinen, chairman of US President Bill Clinton’s Council on Y2K Conversion, said he hoped that this week’s meeting would push countries to set up a blueprint to share information better to prevent any snags during the change to the new year.

“Contingency planning does not mean systems are expected to fail,” Koskinen said. “But since no-one can guarantee that every system will function smoothly during the year 2000 transition, it is prudent to have back-up plans.”

One of the issues that still needs to be resolved, Kamal warned, is the need to help fund developing countries in the technical activities they need to do to avoid Y2K glitches.

Governments represented at this week’s conference have noted the need for such funding and World Bank officials are examining how much it may cost.

Total costs for debugging activities internationally have been estimated at between 200 billion and 800 billion dollars by international media, Kamal said.

But he added that the money should not matter as much as the need to avoid major problems. “You can only accept disruptions of a certain size,” he argued.