What does it mean to be Y2K compliant?

Is there a standard for Compliant?

Is the British Standards Institutions definition widely accepted as the standard in the Electric Utility Industry?

Thanks

Billh

-- Anonymous, January 20, 1999

Answers

Bill, To the best of my knowledge most U.S. electric utilities, both nuclear and non-nuclear, have adopted as a standard NEI/NUSMG 97-07 "NUCLEAR UTILITY YEAR 2000 READINESS" OCTOBER 1997, from the Nuclear Enery Institute Nuclear Utilities Software Management Group.

This document defines Y2K Compliant and Y2K Ready as follows:

Y2K Compliant  Computer systems or applications that accurately process date/time data (including but not limited to, calculating, comparing,and sequencing) from, into and between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the years 1999 and 2000, and leap-year calculations.

Y2K Ready  A computer system or application that has been determined to be suitable for continued use into the year 2000 even though the computer system or application is not fully Y2K Compliant.

The full text of this document is worth viewing, since I believe most utilities have adopted this guideline in full or in part in their Y2K efforts. It can be found at: http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/Y2K/NRCNEI/NEI9707.html

Concerning the British Standards Institute, from my experience many hardware and software vendors use the definition of compliance from this document, which is more detailed than the NUSMG definition.

Hope this helps.

-- Anonymous, January 20, 1999