Most Y2K bugs will occur before 2000, says expert

Most computer failures due to the Year 2000 problem will occur well before January 1st, 2000, and contingency plans need to be in place to handle failures by the end of the second quarter of this year, according to Mr Ian Hugo, assistant director of the British Year 2000 action group, Taskforce 2000, and editor of Millennium Watch, a Year 2000 newsletter.

"I'm sure that the focus on the first of January, 2000 is wrong," said Mr Hugo during a lecture at Trinity College on Wednesday. He believes that 10 per cent of failures have already occurred (whether detected or not), about 60 per cent of failures will happen during this year, and only about 30 per cent will take place on January 1st or after.

The Year 2000, or Y2K problem is the result of the way early computers were programmed to recognise year dates by the final two digits only: 99 for 1999, for example. When 2000 arrives, many computers will have problems making sense of a 00 date, which they may interpret as 1900, or may be unable to recognise at all.

Mr Hugo, who is also a consultant to the World Bank on the Y2K problem, said one of the major difficulties resulting from the computer glitch would be "congestion" - points where multiple computer failures across a range of interconnected organisations or services cause most activity to grind to a halt. Because one failure has a knock-on effect in such a scenario, individual organisations involved in a congestion point would be isolated and unable to function, and eventually would suffer "death by attrition", he said.

He pointed out that the OECD predicts Y2K "will knock 0.5 per cent off business growth in the major industrial nations", a significant number when many of the stronger western nations average 2 per cent annual growth.

All countries are dangerously lagging in their preparations for Y2K, he said, but English-speaking countries are in better shape than others. In Europe, "France and Italy are nowhere", he said, while Germany is behind. The Scandinavian and Benelux countries are in better shape.

But according to a Taskforce2000 survey last year, only 45 per cent of the London Times top 1,000 companies reached a benchmark position for Y2K preparedness. Some 10 to 20 per cent of the remainder are "seriously behind", which is "a serious percentage of the total UK economy", said Mr Hugo.