Ldr of House of Commons said, "I'll beat the bug so the country can have a ball"

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From tomorrow's Electronic Telegraph:

'I'll beat the bug so the country can have a ball' By John Steele

MARGARET BECKETT, the Leader of the House of Commons and a politician not noted - at least in public - for her humour, tells a good Millennium joke.

As the minister charged by Tony Blair with ensuring that Britain does not experience chaos caused by the Millennium computer bug, she found a risk assessment report from Customs and Excise, noting its "continuity planning" for failures. She said: "Investigators reported solemnly that one of the systems, one of the pieces of equipment that has potential problems, is a hair-dryer that they use to dry sniffer dogs, which has embedded chips. They don't think there'll be a problem with it but, if there is, their contingency plan is to use a towel."

Mrs Beckett, however, does not take a frivolous attitude to preparing the nation's defences, a task she sees as "probably bigger than anything since the Second World War". But it is perhaps re-assuring that the 56-year-old former President of the Board of Trade has retained a sense of humour about a task in which she says she has been seen as a "right pain" by colleagues and the business and service sectors.

She remembers eyes glazing over when she talked of checking processors in business-critical systems. "I was under no illusions that that was part of the job, being a pain, and regarded as someone who was always nagging someone about something that really couldn't be that important."

For at least four years Mrs Beckett has been convinced that the bug is important. As President of the Board of Trade after Labour took power in May 1997, she assumed responsibility for persuading, cajoling and "nannying" the private sector into taking seriously the potential failure of computers to cope with the change from 1999 to 2000. Another minister took charge for the public sector.

In becoming Leader of the House, Mrs Beckett assumed overall responsibility for Britain's efforts, probably a task which most politicians would find unpromising, or even politically dangerous. It was hard work to pursuade people of the need for change knowing that "if nothing goes wrong, then it will all be said to have been a complete waste of time. But if things do go wrong then, no doubt, people will be looking to lay the blame at my door."

Beating the bug, she says, will look like business as normal. "But one of my characteristics as a politician has always been that being effective is more important to me than being recognised." Did she volunteer for the Millennium job? "Oh no, "I'm not that stupid."

On Millennium night Mrs Beckett will be in London, rather than at home in her Derby South constituency. She will probably be found at the Dome and the Cabinet Office in the Government's unit monitoring problems. The political stakes could be high for Mrs Beckett and New Labour which wants to be seen as managing the economy and public sector efficiently and responsibly.

Trains failing, power cuts, hospitals struggling, or worse, in the early days of the new Millennium would dent that image severely, despite Mrs Beckett's assertion that the Government cannot be responsible for the work in every enterprise. Britain has done more than most countries to minimise such risks, she says.

"What being ready means to us is that we can't identify any remaining risk of material disruption. That doesn't mean that nothing will go wrong, because things go wrong in the ordinary course of events." She says: "Any organisation of size or substance will tell you that, as a result of the work been undertaken, they have discovered problems that would have caused a major disruption to the service or the enterprise."

Through her reports to Parliament and the publication of regular updates on work done in all sectors, she says, Britain's preparation has been more transparent than almost any other country. For Mrs Beckett, a trained metallurgist and engineer, the biggest revelation was that bug risks were not just about personal computers, but chips and processors, the computer components which drive ventilators and thousands of other devices.

In identifying potential problems, she says, Britain has undertaken fundamental modernisation which may offer major benefits for the future, not just in information technology. It has cost Britain #3 billion. "But out of it, I think, will come an enormous managerial benefit," she says.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), December 31, 1999

Answers

Don't suppose Mrs. Beckett would consider relocating to California and running for the US senate. Naw, clarity is a political danger here.

Seriously, now that it's too late to matter, how alone has she been?

-- Carlos (riffraff1@cybertime.net), December 31, 1999.


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