By EUGENE BINGHAM
The hottest place in town for the country's top officials this New Year's Eve will also be the most sober.
Threats of Y2K bug chaos will draw the nation's senior bureaucrats to the Beehive in Wellington to be on standby, poised to dial up help for any trouble spots.
Years
of preparation and $100,000 have gone into the evening; it is important things are right - for one thing, the eyes of the world will be watching.
"New Zealand starts the year 2000 18 hours ahead of Washington DC, 13 hours ahead of the UK and five hours before Asia, so other countries will be watching closely to see if they can learn anything," said the chairman of the Y2K Readiness Commission, Basil Logan.
Two separate but closely linked monitoring centres have been set up for the changeover to the new millennium, overseen by a committee comprising the chief executives of key Government agencies, including Police Commissioner Peter Doone.
The committee, Y2KMAC, will be chaired by the chief executive of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Mark Prebble.
"Its role is to develop recommendations to the Government for any collective Government responses to events both Y2K and millennium driven, which require coordination across a range of agencies and organisations," said Mr Logan.
The committee will be able to organise a response and report to Prime Minister Helen Clark.
At the nerve centre of the operation is Parliament's bunker, more formally known as the National Monitoring Centre.
From two floors beneath the Beehive, the Ministry for Emergency Management and Civil Defence has the prime role at the centre, liaising with regional staff.
As information comes to hand, it will be posted to a Website run by the Readiness Commission.
Mr Logan says the Website has been bolstered to withstand one million hits in the first two hours, and will be replicated on an identical Website based in Los Angeles so the load can be shared.
The Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank, Rod Carr, will watch the situation as will the heads of major banks, businesses and utilities.
