Now - with less than 300 days to go until the turn of the century - we include a feature on the urgent Year 2000 issue and what actions you can still take locally. First read all about it...
Some Commonwealth Year 2000 web sites:
More recommended Year 2000 web sites:
A longer list of useful Year 2000 web sites is maintained under "Your IT Gateway" page at www.comnet-it.org. If you know of good links to add, please e-mail comnet@gov.mt.
Year 2000 Preparedness Initiative & Funding
The Commonwealth Year 2000 Preparedness Initiative had its provenance
in the Commonwealth Finance Ministers Meeting (CFMM), held in
Ottawa in September/October 1998, which established a Commonwealth
Year 2000 Preparedness Facility. Britain's offer of GB£250,000
to the Facility set in motion the initial steps of the Year 2000
Preparedness Initiative. In its widest sense, the Commonwealth
Year 2000 Preparedness Initiative has objectives which are aimed
at realising the following three measurable outputs:
- Delivery of a Comprehensive Year 2000 Strategy
for each of the developing Commonwealth member states (Phase 1);
- Testing and Implementation of Mitigation and Remediation for Year 2000 Compliance (Phase 2);
- Delivery of Web Resource-Based Commonwealth
Year 2000 Web site (to be implemented with Phases 1 and 2).
To date, the grant from the United Kingdom Government to the
Commonwealth Secretariat (DFID Grant for millennium date change
projects) under the Year 2000 Facility is being deployed for the
implementation of Phase 1 of the Commonwealth Year 2000 Preparedness
Initiative. The objective of this grant is to provide Expert Consultancy
(local or external) to help Governments and Regional Organisations
deliver a Comprehensive Year 2000 Strategy.
Two modes of approach have been designed by the Commonwealth
Secretariat to implement Phase 1 of the Initiative, namely:
Approach Mode 1: (Regional Approach), in which regional
organisations such as CARICOM in the Caribbean, SADC in Eastern
and Southern Africa or FORUM Secretariat in South Pacific, and
others eligible for the Grant, may apply for a Grant on behalf
of their member states. Following months of logistical arrangements,
assisted in part by timely and systematic interventions on behalf
of the Commonwealth Secretariat by the Commonwealth Network of
Information Technology for Development (COMNET-IT), which has
been designated as Co-Execution Agency in the implementation of
the Commonwealth Year 2000 Preparedness Initiative, CARICOM's
Year 2000 Initiative is on course to commence in the first week
of March 1999 with the aim to deliver Comprehensive Year 2000
Strategies for each of the 13 member states of CARICOM. SADC's
Year 2000 Initiative under the auspices of the Commonwealth Year
2000 Preparedness Initiative is also scheduled to commence the
in first week of March 1999, with the aim to deliver Comprehensive
Year 2000 Strategies for 11 Countries. Year 2000 Initiative for
member countries within the FORUM Secretariat umbrella are envisaged
to follow a similar pattern, with an anticipated commencement
date in early April 1999.
Under the Regional Approach, a Comprehensive Regional Year 2000
Framework is evolved, and a Country-Specific Year 2000 Strategy
for each of the Commonwealth member states of a regional organisation
is evolved, which is consistent with the regional framework. All
Country-Specific Year 2000 Strategies are envisaged to incorporate,
among others, the following:
Embedded in the Regional Approach is the inclusion of a training
module, to be undertaken by the consultants, for all the counterpart
National Year 2000 Team members from each of the member states early
in the process of delivery of the regional framework.
The Regional Approach has been found to be cost-effective and efficient,
as implementations are designed to be accomplished within a specific
period for a whole region. This has been found to have the benefit
of saving on expert consultancy travel costs, particularly where
expertise is being sourced from outside the region under consideration.
Unprecedented delays in the regional approach include the need by
regional organisations to get the blessing of their Council of Ministers
(or similar or equivalent) prior to commencement. This is sometimes
necessary to demonstrate high level commitment by the regional organisation,
which is considered essential for the ownership of a regional initiative.
Approach Mode 2: (Individual Country Approach), in which
individual member states and/or national governments have applied
as individual entities for assistance with the millennium bug. To
date a total of 7 countries have done so or expressed an interest
to do so in accordance with the Guidelines for Grant Applications:
two in Asia, three in the South Pacific, two from West Africa. Of
these, up to 5 national Year 2000 initiatives are anticipated to
commence by early April 1999. Individual countries have been somewhat
slow in responding to our December 1998 Announcement of the Grant,
mainly as a result of the requirement for the countries to have
in readiness a National Year 2000 Team to work in counterpart mode
with the consultant(s).
The Individual Country Approach undertakes to deliver Country-Specific
Comprehensive Year 2000 Strategies which, however, may not be subservient
to the requirements of any regional framework.
What Next After the Delivery of the Comprehensive Year 2000 Strategies?
It is perceivable that member countries will be looking for assistance
in relation to the Comprehensive Testing Phase following delivery
of the Comprehensive Year 2000 Strategies. As part of the designated
tasks of the consultants under the Commonwealth Year 2000 Preparedness
Initiative, member countries will be assisted with the formulation
of Project Proposals for accessing additional funds for further
work. A number of member countries feel that remedial action of
the kind associated with Phase 2 will be extremely crucial and critical
for the achievement of reasonable Year 2000 preparedness.
Readers will be appraised of developments with regard to the other
phases in the near future.
Perceived Risks in the Implementation of the Initiative
A number of logistical constraints pose serious risks with respect
to the successful implementation the Commonwealth Year 2000 Initiative,
including the following:
- Short time span left before the dawn of the new millennium
- Prevalence of inertia on the part of policy makers to adequately
address the Year 2000 problem
- Paucity of resources (including budgetary allocations) by member
governments for the purpose of securing Year 2000 compliance
- Legacy systems written in pre-fourth generation languages; these
will be hardest to deal with, as these systems, after many years
of travail, will have tended to lose their original documentation
and hence existing codes will be difficult to decipher. Moreover,
creating the test data for such systems is a daunting task.
- Diverse embedded systems, known for withstanding long years
of travail, are likely to pose the most difficult situations from
the standpoint of identifying traceability chains to the manufacturers.
Moreover, embedded systems engineering is scarce within the human
resource skills matrix of Commonwealth developing countries.
PREPARATION OF PROPOSAL
- Candidates are requested to submit a Proposal based on the
guidelines available from Mr Rogers W'O Okot-Uma at the contact
address below (the main points of which are included here). There
is no requirement for a standard format.
- The proposal should briefly provide an overview of the status
of Year 2000 preparedness in the country. It should state in general
terms what is envisaged as core and essential to the
survival of government business continuity (mission-critical systems).
- In preparing the Proposal, the proponents should ensure that
the Proposal includes:
- Request for an external Expert Consultant or an indication
of the availability of a local Expert Consultant for the delivery
of a Comprehensive Year 2000 Strategy in the manner stipulated.
- Availability of Staff Counterpart who would work hand-in-hand
with the Expert Consultant assigned the task of delivery of
a Comprehensive Year 2000 Strategy.
- Availability of a Year 2000 Scoping Project Team, who will
provide the necessary staff effort to carry out the tasks stipulated.
-
Candidates should include as attachments to the Proposal succinct
information about the lead organisation/Ministry*, collaborating
organisations, sectors or ministries together with profiles
of members of the Year 2000 Project Team. The Candidate should
make available a profile of the local Expert Consultant (if
any); Commonwealth Secretariat will make available a profile
of any external Expert Consultant appointed.
-
Candidates will not be required to prepare a financial costing
of the proposed Year 2000 Project, save that the proposal should
state the estimated input in terms of units of one-, two-, or,
exceptionally, three- person weeks.
-
Candidates willing to contribute their own resources, or which
propose to obtain and use resources from other donors for this
work, are encouraged to submit a proposal in which Commonwealth
Secretariat Year 2000 Grant is deployed in conjunction with
the funds from the other sources.
*Any government Ministry, preferably the Government Ministry
of Finance, it being understood that the proposal is for a national
action as opposed to an isolated sectoral initiative. An intergovernmental
regional body (or organisation) may be considered eligible for an
award under the Commonwealth Year 2000 Facility provided the objectives
satisfy the conditions of the Grant.
COMMONWEALTH YEAR 2000
PREPAREDNESS INITIATIVE CONTACTS :
Executing Agency:
Commonwealth Secretariat
(Attention: Rogers W’O Okot-Uma)
Marlborough House, Pall Mall, London
SW1Y 5HX England
Telephone: +44 171 747 6339
Fax: +44 171 747 6335
E-mail: r.okot-uma@commonwealth.com
or:100574.3255@compuserve.com
Co-Executing Agency
COMNET-IT
The above information was provided by Mr. Rogers W'O Okot-Uma, contact as above.
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