ISSUE 3

Year 2000 Preparedness Initiative - July 1999 Update

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, in recognition of the importance of early action to deal with the millennium bug. To date Comprehensive Year 2000 Strategies have been delivered for eleven countries under the auspices of CARICOM in the Caribbean, eleven countries under the auspices of SADC in the Eastern and Southern Africa, and four countries following the Individual-Country Approach, for Pakistan, The Gambia, Sierra Leone and The Maldives.

Observations from the process so far include:

• Commonwealth member states have been found to be at various levels of Year 2000 preparedness
• Top level commitment in member governments has been found to be commendably high, but there is still a shortage of appropriate resources, particularly for the next and immediate phase of remediation
• organisational arrangements for Year 2000 preparedness are in place, albeit with varying levels of pertinent authority and responsibilities
• public awareness is on the rise
• full contingency plans for mission-critical systems are the usual focus now due to the short lead-time to the millennium.

A lesson drawn is the need for a general discipline, which is systematic and systemic, for disaster preparedness and risk management.

CARICOM's Year 2000 Initiative under the auspices of the Commonwealth Year 2000 Preparedness initiative commenced in mid-March 1999, and to date Comprehensive Year 2000 Strategies have been delivered for eleven member states of CARICOM, with the following findings and/recommendations:

• Need for vesting national Year 2000 co-ordinators with authority and responsibility;
• Need to secure responses from all key sectors of national economies of member countries;
• Need to identify and upgrade hurricane contingency plans to reflect Year 2000 needs;
• Need to regionalise and seek funding for technical audits, public awareness and other initiatives as follows:
  • Co-ordination of airport compliance programmes;
  • Co-ordination and pooling of resources for engineering audits of utility providers and hospitals;
  • Need for co-ordination of cross-border issues potentially affecting telecommunications, medical supplies, fuel storage and supply chain dependencies;
  • Standardisation of contingency plans and methodologies;
  • Post-implementation audits of government mission-critical information systems;
  • Need to introduce Year 2000 specifications in all tendering and procuring processes
  • Reorganise and improve Year 2000 national co-ordinating team structure where necessary

SADC's Year 2000 Initiative under the auspices of the Commonwealth Year 2000 Preparedness Initiative commenced mid-March 1999. To date Comprehensive Year 2000 Strategies have been implemented for the eleven member countries, with the following findings:

• Need for co-ordination of all sector initiatives in each of the countries;
• Need for a standard methodology for documentation of all due processes for Year 2000 preparedness at the sector level, including the development of a Year 2000 database;
• Need for central point of access for documented project charters, project plans and inventory lists required to ensure an effective and efficient process and to guarantee the validity of the results reported;
• Need to carry out independent audits to update the status of Year 2000 preparedness in each of the countries;
• Remediation would be overly expensive and would require bilateral approaches to funding;
• Delivery of Comprehensive Year 2000 Contingency Planning would be of high priority in the context of short lead time and focusing on mission critical systems.

Possible Next Steps of the Year 2000 Preparedness Initiative include:

• Limited Testing under Bilateral initiatives with Donor Governments and Agencies;
• Delivery of Comprehensive Year 2000 Contingency Plans;
• Selected Year 2000 'Best Practice and Experience' Visits.

This summary provided by:
Mr Rogers W'O Okot-Uma
of the Commonwealth Secretariat, 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

InfoDev Year 2000 Grant Applications - May 1999 Status

A total of over US$19M in grant aid for Year 2000 work was applied for as at 18 May 1999. Of this, US$14,253,623 was approved.

A total of 112 countries had applied for assistance under the scheme and 87 had received approval/funding.

Information provided by Ms. Dubow
Web site: www.http://www.infodev.org/
E-mail: infodev@worldbank.org

Is the Year 2000 passed yet?

It is hard to know what to think, let alone to know what to do, about the Year 2000. A year ago, the subject was receiving mass media attention in many countries. Now it is largely ignored in the British computing magazines and dismissed by some IT professionals. Even Peter De Jager seems to be playing some risks down now.

This could reflect satisfaction in the precautions taken to avert Year 2000 problems. It might be the result of deliberate "confidence building measures" on the orders of financial organisations. Or it may prove to be the "calm before the storm".

Of course the situation differs by region and by country - both in terms of the threat posed by Year 2000 disruption and in the reaction to that threat. What must be expected at this late stage is that nations with their own Year 2000 programmes under control will start looking sideways at neighbouring countries to judge how reliable overseas operations are likely to be at the end of this year and to curtail trade accordingly.

If for no other reason than maintaining a trustworthy aspect, all Governments would do well to set up a body to receive, record and reply to significant Year 2000 enquiries so as not to suffer unnecessary loss of business. It is widely acknowledged that a National Year 2000 Taskforce, which can act independently and quickly, is required to ensure nation-wide Year 2000 survivability. It may be (as has been seen already in Malta) that commercial operations cannot give satisfactory assurances to their overseas clients unless they are backed up by their Government - especially where power, telecommunications or water supplies are state run.

Such a co-ordinating, cross-sectoral body - the national Year 2000 taskforce - might be able to solve some national and international problems merely by exchanging information - which commercial entities cannot achieve due to their limited access to officialdom. But any taskforce needs to be dynamic and decisive to do any good.

The need for Contingency Plans at all levels, from corporate to individual is ever more important as time runs out. At a Year 2000 project level, re-programming, even replacing, systems at this late date seems a risky option more likely to cause than cure problems. The complexity of many modern IT systems means that 100% testing is impossible and hasty changes are always unwise.

It is interesting to note that HM Government in the United Kingdom is now working on an Awareness campaign by means of pamphlets inserted in millions of daily papers "The Millennium Bug: Facts Not Fiction" to inform the public and redress the harm done by unnecessary Year 2000 fears. This cannot be cheap!

We all look forward to celebrating the New Year and to putting Year 2000 in the past.