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Issue date: 16 December 1999

UK government declares itself Y2K compliant

Margaret Beckett yesterday announced that all UK government business critical systems are millennium compliant.

Beckett, who is responsible for co-ordinating government action on the Millennium Bug told MPs, "I am delighted to report that work on business critical systems is now fully complete in all Government Departments and Agencies. This means that systems have been fixed, tested and successfully put back into operation."

She also announced the creation of a government-run unit which would coordinate all Y2K information about Whitehall. The unit, called the Millennium Centre, will operate from 31 December to 7 January as part of the Central Government Millennium Operating Regime. She said, "The centre will receive information from Government Departments about any significant Millennium problems in the sectors for which they have policy responsibility."

A special website will keep the public informed about the current situation in the UK.

Earlier this week, the United Nations' International Y2K Cooperation Centre reported that it expects most organisations worldwide will experience "only limited damage from the Y2K bug". It predicted many Y2K errors across the globe but only moderate impact on businesses.

However, the UN struck one warning note over the risk facing health and government services in developing countries and smaller organisations. "There remains a medium to high risk that localised Y2K-caused errors could adversely affect public health and safety in the early days of January."

-- Uncle Bob (UNCLB0B@AOL.COM), December 16, 1999

Answers

And we should have expected the govmint to say something else?

-- Bruce (broeser@ccgnv.net), December 16, 1999.

I think we all owe this whole "y2k" thing a *big* round of applause, for *finally* motivating us to get rid of imperfect software.

-- Ron Schwarz (rs@clubvb.com.delete.this), December 16, 1999.

Go and ask anyone who works in the UK Inland Revenue how they feel about their new system, which is still in a development/test cycle.

It's 100% compliant, it just doesn't work.

-- Servant (public_service@yahoo.com), December 16, 1999.