Hush-hush on defects

By MICHAEL FOREMAN

While few Y2K incidents were reported yesterday as PCs were switched on for the first time since the holiday break, there were indications that where issues do occur they will not be disclosed.

John Holley, Y2K programme coordinator at Auckland University, said he knew of several companies that had Y2K problems but "aren't saying".

"Whether that's because of commercial sensitivity or they are frightened of litigation I don't know. I suspect every large organisation in New Zealand has had problems of some sort."

Mr Holley said that so far only one genuine Y2K problem had surfaced at the university yesterday - a CD-Rom database could not be reset to 1999.

He said that without "a significant effort to get things fixed" over the past 18 months his organisation would face many more problems.

"The student enrolment and admissions system wouldn't be working now if we hadn't fixed it."

Tony Trewinnard, general manager of Year 2000, a company specialising in Y2K fixes, said there had been no "back to work" rush for Y2K fixes.

"I think a lot of problems may still surface at the end of the month.

"That's when a lot of people will actually start using things like spreadsheets and do period dependent processing which are the things that are liable to go wrong."

Mr Trewinnard said forklift truck drivers and warehouse staff would be more likely to discover Y2K problems than information technology specialists.

"You might have a system that says you've got X rolls of carpet in a warehouse for example. It's only when you get a call from the warehouse saying they've run out of carpet that you realise it was wrong and you trace it back to a date problem."

In a "first take" report on Y2K, industry analyst GartnerGroup predicted only 10 per cent of Y2K problems would be discovered in the first two weeks of 2000, and only 55 per cent in the rest of the year.

It said defect "spikes" would be noted and software would fail when date-related transactions were run.