Government says yes; Taskforce 2000 says no

With less than 100 days to go until the Year 2000, there is sharp disagreement on the state of preparedness in the UK.

The government today claimed its task of testing systems and fixing Y2K bugs was virtually finished. Commons Leader Margaret Beckett told MPs: "98% of business-critical systems will have been completed by the end of September."

Mrs Beckett went on to offer reassurance that the remaining work is in hand, along with a "proper focus" on continuity planning.

She added: "We are also putting in place arrangements for the millennium weekend so that government and the key infrastructure providers can share information on how things are going and how any problems that do emerge are being handled."

But, countered Taskforce 2000, it's too late for parts of the public sector, and many large companies, to come through the change unscathed.

Says executive director Robin Guenier: "Fixing everything is impossible. Y2K is one of the biggest management problems ever faced. It is not exclusively a 1st January, 2000 problem: its effects will be felt long after the date change."

Taskforce 2000 believes poor management by government and business will exaggerate the inevitable difficulties. "Problems will build up," said assistant director Ian Hugo, "and these will cause, at best, ripples across the economy for several months. We will also be impacted by what happens around the world, with supply chains likely to be badly disrupted. We stand by our view, expressed early this year, that companies and government are at serious risk from 'death by attrition' or 'death by a thousand cuts'."

In particular, Taskforce 2000 argues, companies and government need to rapidly advance their contingency planning efforts. In many cases, the group claims, these are lightweight and untested.

This is clearly a debate that will run and run - at least for another three months.

Elliott Chase