2 ministries told to submit Y2K plan

NEW DELHI, JUNE 8. The Government has asked the Power and Surface Transport Ministries to submit an action plan within a fortnight on Y2K compliance measures being taken by them.

The decision was taken at a meeting on Y2K of the Committee of Secretaries (CoS) here yesterday.

Both the sectors would exceed the September-end deadline for Y2K compliance, Mr. Ravinder Gupta, secretary of the Department of Electronics (DoE), told PTI here.

The Y2K bug would hit the power sector in billing systems of State Electricity Boards (SEBs) and regional generation and load despatch centres.

In the surface transport sector, software in ports handling import and export data could be affected.

As the electricity distribution system in the country, with five regional grids, was not centralised, failure of one grid due to Y2K bug would put pressure on another which might not take the additional load.

The power sector was being given special attention as it was the least progressing sector, a DoE official said, adding that the sector, except the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), was very casual and complacent about Y2K issues.

Some, like surveillance radars in the civil aviation sector, might even take longer to become Y2K complaiant. Sectors such as power which were slow on contingency plans had been asked to act without delay, Mr. Gupta said, adding that most sectors would meed the deadline.

All Ministries had been asked to put their Y2K compliance details on their web pages on the Internet to win public confidence, Mr. Gupta said.

The meeting decided that all sectors would undertake compliance audits and third-party certification.

The defence sector, which was progressing well on the Y2K front, would be excluded from this and would only undertake internal audits.

The meeting discussed providing tax exemption to organisations on the expenditure incurred on Y2K compliance in 1999-2000, as announced by the Finance Minister, Mr. Yashwant Sinha, recently.

-- regular (zzz@z.z), June 10, 1999

Answers

Hmmm...half the worlds programmers come from India and Pakistan....what were they thinking?

Ostriches

-- MidwestMike_ (midwestmike_@hotmail.com), June 10, 1999.