Y2K ALERT

THE buzz-word as we approach the New Year seems to be Y2K. The software community is keeping its fingers crossed on what would happen when the world enters the next millennium.

The optimists are of the view that enough has been done to fix the bug and the roll-over would be so smooth that it would be like any other New Year party.

However, the pessimists, urging people to stockpile for weeks, present a picture of planes falling from the sky, nuclear bombs getting activated, financial and banking transactions going haywire and a number of nations across the globe plunging into darkness due to breakdown of power stations.

A number of countries, including India, have spent a large amount of money to rectify the problem.

Gartner Group, a reputed information technology research group, has estimated that companies around the world would have spend between $ 300 million and $ 600 million to fix the problem.

The IDC, another U.S. high technology consultancy, estimated that by the end of 1999, the world would have spent $ 250 billion on finding, replacing, rewriting, testing and documenting computer codes infected by the bug.

What is Y2K?

Y2K is an abbreviation which stands for "year two thousand (K is Roman numeral equivalent to a thousand). The Y2K problem is also known as the millennium bug.

For many years now, software applications have been built using an mm/dd/yy format for storing dates. This format allocates two digit fields for storing the value of a year.

This practice was widespread from 1960s to the 1980s to save disk and memory space, when these resources were relatively expensive.

This means that 1990 will be stored in the computer as 90. So at the turn of the century, computers using the mm/dd/yy format will hold the value of the date as 01/01/00.

When used, the two-digit year representation can cause the system to interpret the year 00 as 1900. The system that uses the last two digits of the year to calculate the day of the week will think January 1, 2000, as a Monday (as in January 1, 1900), rather than a Saturday.

The year (Y2K) problem can be defined as the inability of computer programmes to correctly interpret the century from a date which represents a year as a two-digit value.

The data mismatch can exist in any level of hardware and software, from micro-code to application programmes, in files and databases, and might be present in any platform.

The Y2K problem is not confined to just computer systems. It may affect, among other things ,elevator controls, household appliances, programmable devices, airline schedules, railway’s reservation system and automated teller machines.

The bug may also cause widespread system failures and miscalculations, which will together account for the collapse of around 10 per cent of the global business.

Fixing the problem

Unfortunately there is no one-stop solution. Due to the complexity and diversity of applications, platforms, languages, technologies, programming styles and business scenarios, it is impossible for a developer to come out with a one-time solution.

There are three basic approaches which can be taken for coping with the problem.

Expanding two digits to four digits — this is a straightforward method wherein all two-digit year fields are expanded to four digits. This results in an increase in the file size.

Stuffing four digits into two physical positions — eight bits (binary digits) are used to represent one digit in COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language). The same digit can be represented by four bits inside a computer. So the remaining two digits of a year can be adjusted in the extra space that is already there. There is no increase in the file size in this case. Since changes are made in the code itself, a great amount of precision is required.

In the method of sliding dates’, "60" is assumed to be the base year. Then codes in a programme are checked to find out if the year is less than 60. If the answer is yes, then 2000 is added to the year, else 1900 is added to it. The problem with this method is that it does not work with certain applications.

Y2K: India and inter-national rating

India has been placed in the "moderately prepared" category by the International Monitoring, a technology consulting group based in Britain that has ranked nations according to their Y2K preparedness.

Its ratings are based on the risk of disruption in a given country’s power, telecom, finance and transportation infrastructure.

The IM has placed the countries in six categories — best, better, moderately, less and worst prepared. It has identified a number of countries which have failed to provide adequate information.

A Gartner Group report on "Y2K readiness in industry" claims that though billions of rupees are being spent fixing the bug, there still exists a 15 to 66 per cent possibility of failure in various industrial sectors, depending on the level and type of system in use.

In India, the software industry created a mark barely 10 years back and currently the total PC penetration covers a mere 0.25 per cent of the population. India is, therefore, in its early stages of computerisation, hence not (comparatively) much exposed to the millennium bug. (Some experts say such a belief is not true and the bug is very much capable of taking organisations to the brink of extinction).

But at the same time, most of the Indian companies are still using 286/386/486 and old Pentium systems which are not Y2K compliant.

The Gartner report puts the probability of Y2K failure in India at 50 per cent in its "Y2K readiness" report.

Government measures

India’s transition into the next millennium would be a smooth affair, says the Chairman of the IT Task Force, Montek Singh Ahluwalia.

"India is in a much better position to make the transition into the year 2000 than was the case just a few months ago," Montek Singh said, adding that "there can be no ironclad guarantees that we will not experience any problems."

The government has identified 11 critical sectors and they have become Y2K compliant, he said.

The 11 priority sectors are banking and finance, telecommunications, power, civil aviation, railways, ports, petroleum and natural gas, insurance, space, atomic energy and defence.

Montek Singh said the rating by international agencies were based on June figures and from then on much progress had been made.

Major registrars and share transfer agents, who account for 90 per cent of market-related business operations of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), and 77 per cent of financial institutions (FIs) were Y2K ready.

He said Y2K compliance had been achieved within the 3 per cent budgetary allocation of the ministers and the budgetary allocations of the public sector undertakings.

The IT Action Force, which monitored the Y2K compliance of the critical sectors, in its report made a number of recommendations, including a proper law relating to the problem.

"There is no legal framework existing in the country to handle any special issues relating to the legal aspects arising out of the Y2K problem and IT in general, especially in the post-Y2K scenario," Montek Singh said.

He said, "This could take care of the legal disputes which might arise in the post -Y2K period. Each of the 11 critical sectors will set up a control room to be made operational as we approach the roll-over date."

The report has suggested a number of steps to be taken by the state governments which include centralised control rooms in the state linked to districts, chief ministers to personally review all Y2K matters, contingency plans for any law and order problems arising out of rumours and stray failures and setting up of a central control room in Delhi which can be linked to sectoral control room and state control room.

Y2K problem in India

Many people believe that the Y2K problem is not a serious problem for India because of the relatively low level of penetration of computers. However, it is important to recognise that the impact of the Y2K problem is not limited to those directly using computers and digitally controlled equipment.

Problems surfacing in any infrastructure sector which provides essential services to the economy as a whole, could lead to a serious disruption even in activities where there is little or no internal use of computers.

Disruption in essential services like electricity, telecommunications, banking could have widespread disruptive effects. For these reasons the impact of Y2K problem on the "critical systems" deserves special attention.

Although computer usage, or the degree of penetration of computer-related and digitally controlled equipments is relatively low in India it would be wrong to conclude that there is no interal Y2K problem in many sectors.

Large parts of the modern sector of the economy are increasingly using such equipments. Internal failure in these industries like those of petroleum products, fertilisers and steel generally could lead to a significant disruption in supply.

Indian companies are increasingly linked to a seamless web of international economic and commercial relations and their suitability as a trading partner depends upon the world’s perception of India’s ability to tackle the Y2K problem.