State enterprises prepare for 'Millennium Bug'

Accra (Greater Accra), 14th April ?99-

Commander P.M.G. Griffiths (Rtd), Deputy Minister of Communications, on Wednesday said even though Ghana is not rated a high information technology user, it will not leave anything to chance in addressing the computer crisis expected to hit the world in the year 2000. Addressing a day's forum for Heads of State-Owned Enterprises on the looming crisis posed by computer systems error at the beginning of year 2000, the Minister emphasised the need for SOEs to be compliant with year 2000 computer- aided information systems.

"Between now and December 1999, we expect all SOEs to be compliant with the millennium information systems," Cdr. Griffiths told the Chief Executives and their technical teams at the opening of the forum. The Millennium Bug problem, otherwise known as Y2K, is a computer-related crisis which will affect both software and hardware databases at the beginning of year 2000. Computer experts said the problem is anticipated because most computer systems have been designed to represent the 21st century data with two digits instead of four. Therefore, non-compliant computers will interpret the year 2000 as '00', which will result in errors in date representation and calculation.

"That is why all of us are at risk. We, therefore, need to put in place contingency plans which will ensure the compliance for the description of the database," Cdr Griffiths said.

The Forum, which was jointly organised by the "Y2K Project" office of the Ministry of Communications and the State Enterprises Commission, was aimed at assisting the public sector to overcome the Y2K problem.

Mr Sam B. Atakorah, Y2K Project Coordinator, said the strategy of the project is to focus on creating awareness of the problem nation- wide, form a network of Y2K teams in all state establishments and assist "mission-critical SOEs" to solve the problem, among others. He said the project has targeted September 30, 1999 as a deadline for all SOEs and government agencies to be compliant.