Other countries’ lack of preparedness could hurt us

When the clock turns midnight on Dec. 31, 1999, and millions of unrepaired computer applications show the year moving from ’99 to ’00 and then break down in confusion, in the United States there will be many millions more that have been repaired, tested and proven “Year 2000 compliant.” But what about overseas?

Asked what his government was doing about the Year 2000 computer bug, the official of one Middle Eastern country assured his questioner, “When we see it, we’ll spray for it.” That account is one of many cited recently in a special Central Intelligence Agency report released to Congress.

In another unnamed country, in Asia, a government official also appeared sanguine. His country, he noted, does not use the Western calendar, so it doesn’t have to worry about the Year 2000 problem. (Unfortunately, his computers probably do not know about his country’s calendar.)

In Russia and other crisis-ridden lands of the former Soviet bloc, the U.S. military has decided to share previously secret missile tracking information so if the early warning systems of our one-time adversaries “go dark” early on Jan. 1, 2000, they will not conclude that they are under attack and start launching their 2,500 nuclear missiles.

Comparing the Year 2000 problem or “Y2K” as it quickly is becoming known to El Niño, Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre told the Senate last week, “This is going to have implications in the world and in American society that we can’t even comprehend … I will be the first to say we’re not going to be without some nasty surprises.”

Before the next year and a half is over, we may have to help a great many countries in ways we are only beginning to perceive. To do so is in our own interest. Economic and social turmoil overseas, including even sharper economic disintegration than Asia and Russia are experiencing now, cannot be good for American trade, finance or national security. If, for example, the Federal Aviation Administration overcomes its present inadequacies in preparation for 2000 and allows planes to fly on Jan. 1 that year, our airlines could still suffer from collapsed communications at airports in other nations.

The United States definitely leads the world on the Y2K issue, if only because other countries have been even slower in figuring out the danger. Indeed, because we are seen as the world’s leading technological power, others may have waited for us to get excited before they even took notice.

It was past programmers’ habit of leaving the “19” off the year designation when writing code to save digital space that led to the strange Year 2000 glitch. So, a tiny historical oversight, as in some science fiction tale, now threatens to disrupt the networks of high technology upon which our civilization depends. Billions of dollars are being spent to prevent, or at least minimize, the disruptions that otherwise await us. Some big businesses, many small businesses and several federal departments might not make the 2000 deadline and, through their connections to others, all American society could be affected.

Bad as that is, 71 percent of the world’s computer code is overseas, according to Y2K analyst Caper Jones, and relatively little of it is being fixed so far. A review of varied reports suggests that all other countries trail behind the none-too-terrific efforts of the United States. Some are back by only a few months (Canada and the United Kingdom, for example) and some by 12 to 18 months (many European and Asian countries). In still other countries almost nothing is happening, even now.

Experience shows that the full process of Y2K fixes from awareness and inventory to assessment, solution design, testing, implementation and monitoring takes a minimum of 2½ years. And yet 2000 is just 18 months yonder.

That is why Americans who consider Japan six to nine months behind the U.S. planning effort are nonplussed by the casual certainty of Masanori Yoshida, the official in charge of Y2K in Japan, who assures questioners that “we won’t be seeing a miserable New Year 2000.” The same seemingly relaxed attitude is seen in Japan’s private sector. Whereas America’s largest banks are spending up to $600 million each (in the case of Citicorp) to meet Y2K concerns a demonstration of how seriously they regard the situation a recent survey showed that, together, the 49 Japanese banks surveyed are spending only a total of $249 million.

China and Southeast Asia are still farther behind on Y2K, according to several sources. Edward Lanfranco of China Research Corp. estimates the gap at 12 to 18 months. An official of the Shanghai Stock Exchange told Reuters that his organization had yet to take any preparatory steps. As stocks are traded globally, such lassitude should alarm U.S. financial institutions.

Indians appear to regard Y2K with droll complacency. A Reuters story in The Times of India says that industry leaders there think India might come out fine in 2000 because most of that country has never computerized. (In fact; computers control much of the infrastructure, such as airports, banking and telecommunications.) On the other hand, India has educated more computer programmers than it can employ domestically. Instead of fretting, therefore, officials are hoping “to make a quick buck” by exporting the services of India’s “cost-efficient software writers.”

Canada, the largest trading partner of the United States, is thought to be close to the U.S. in preparedness. But many observers here were stunned last week to learn that Paul Rummell, Y2K “czar” for Canada’s federal government, is resigning. Opposition party politicians were quick to speculate that he was giving up because he was slated to fail without stronger political and legal authority to force corrective measures.

Mexico, our other neighbor and our third-largest trade partner, is so late in meeting the Y2K challenge that its government appointed a task force to study the problem only last fall. The whole of Latin America, according to the CIA report, is “way behind the power curve.”

Europe generally is thought to be nine months to a year behind the United States, except for the U.K., where Prime Minister Tony Blair alone among the world’s political executives has provided hands-on leadership and a sense of urgency. His government gov is drawing up emergency plans to forestall power failures, hospital shutdowns and airport closures at the start of 2000.

Blair also is trying to promote the issue within the European Union, where he currently serves as president. Unfortunately, the Europeans decided that this would be a good time to introduce their common currency, the Euro, and that thorny transition is competing with Y2K for end-of-century time and attention. The author of the CIA’s report, Sherry Burns, said she could not see how the Europeans could master both imposing tasks simultaneously.

The U.S. State Department, the agency that is supposed to keep track of commercial as well as political and diplomatic matters overseas, was itself rebuked recently by Rep. Steve Horn, R-Calif. His House subcommittee on technology gave the department’s Y2K performance to date a D grade.

Nonetheless, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has announced plans to raise the Y2K issue in every speech she makes overseas for the next year and a half.

Well she might.