The two UK Year 2000 watchdogs were once again involved in a war of words after Action 2000, the official Y2K progress monitor, issued a statement of business as usual in advance of its National Infrastructure Forum meeting today. Again Robin Guenier, chairman of Taskforce 2000, called for more information about the state of millennium readiness for businesses and public sector department.
Action 2000 asserts that all but a few of the institutions that make up the UK infrastructure, utilities, city firms and emergency services, fit into the æblueÆ sector, which means that comprehensive investigation and testing of service provision has been undertaken with a record of companiesÆ preparation and contingency plans. All the organizations yet to finish their preparations, Action 2000 says, will have done so before December.
Taskforce 2000 says that the traffic light structuring is useless, because Action 2000 is doing all the analysis itself, rather than making the process a transparent one, with all the questions and answers to its surveys open. If itÆs as good as they say it is, said Guenier skeptically, then we welcome it.
The two organizations have been sparring ever since October 1997 when government funding was withdrawn from Taskforce 2000, then the only watchdog, apparently because it criticized the administrationÆs sloth concerning Y2K.
