Most UK firms not ready for year 2000

A whopping 70 per cent of UK companies have yet to make any serious attempt to ensure their IT systems do not fall over on 1 January 2000. Robin Guenier, executive director of Taskforce 2000, the body set up by the government to raise awareness of the millennium bug, will next month reveal that only 30 per cent of UK organisations have made a real effort to address the problem. ?The number of firms that have started projects is pitiful,? he said. ?Companies should have started two years ago. The amount of time left is astonishingly short.? Systems should be fixed by October 1998 in order to give plenty of time for amendments and to test the new environment for a full year before the date change. ?That means companies will have only six months left to do the job,? said Guenier. He said companies that have yet to begin year 2000 projects need to prioritise their business processes and decide which ones need to be made compliant first. Firms may even need to consider replacing some software with new packages to ensure business continuity, even though the packages may only do 60 per cent of the work, he said. BT has warned its 1,800 core suppliers that they will be sacked if they cannot show they are year 2000-compliant.