By Andy Lawrence
The British Government has been deliberately misleading the public about the extent of the Y2K millennium bug problem, possibly with the misguided intention of avoiding public panic, according to the man widely acknowledged to be the country’s leading expert on the subject. Robin Guernier, who heads the Y2K awareness organization, Taskforce 2000, told the Regent Associates conference in London that the Government’s widely reported assertion that most British organization were on course to fix the Y2K problem is flatly contradicted by its own [the Government’s] research. The details of this unpublished research show that a fifth of the top 500 companies in the UK have not completed a basic inventory of their IT assets, a basic precondition for even setting out to solve the Y2K problem, and 45% have made little progress beyond that. The Government’s public conclusion to these findings stated that 90% of the companies were on course to fix the problem. Either the Government is deliberately misleading the public, Guernier concluded, or it doesn’t understand the issues. There is little doubt what Guernier thinks: in October 1997, the recently installed Labour Government withdrew funding for Taskforce 2000, apparently because Guernier publicly criticized the Government for a lack of urgency. In its place, the Government set up a rival organization, Action 2000, which has been much more passive. Since then, Guernier has been chiding the Government for its lack of urgency. Now, he is more concerned with what appears to be deliberate misinformation. Tony Blair said it was necessary to be straight with the public, said Guernier, but they think openness will lead to public panic. In fact, he countered, its lack of openness was increasingly the likelihood of panic as the millennium neared. Guernier argues that if Governments are more open now, the problems will be reduced later on. It is impossible to panic for ten months…we have to be open. People have to accept responsibility, and individuals need to be named, he said. Guernier’s biggest concern is that the Government is telling the public that small companies will suffer serious consequences, when this is probably not the case, while large companies are on or ahead of schedule in fixing the problem. But he argues that big business, contrary to received wisdom is lagging in its attempts to fix the problem. Guernier, a former chief executive of the Government’s Central Communication and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA), has been tracking the progress of large companies for several years, and says he knows of no large companies that are on schedule. Tony Blair said recently the threat is fading. I think he is wrong. Guernier said that companies now ought to be thinking beyond merely fixing the problem: The key now is continuity planning, risk management, contingency planning. These are not IT issues, they are management issues. Murphy’s Law (if it can go wrong it will), he added, will not be suspended for the millennium, and nor will O’Shaughnessy’s corollary that Murphy was an optimist.
