Plenary Session Four: The year 2000 problem: Is Africa Ready?
The session dwelt on the "millennium bug" or the "Y2K problem" and the race against time that African countries face as the year 2000 approaches. Most systems lack the proper programming to treat the advent of the new century.
Presentations made during the session emphasised the fact that all services supported by these systems, processing data related information such as payroll systems, financial accounting, flight control and telecommunications, are expected to face data corruption, failure and interruption.
Creating awareness and prompting countries to come up with "Emergency" national plans to tackle the problem will remain a top priority. The following results were obtained through surveys carried out by infoDev on 127 countries:
Underestimating the consequences, delay in coming up with national programmes, financial and human constraints will be just a few of the "main classes of impediments" according to one of the presenters.
Following awareness creation the next step identified involved:
The session noted that with the large amount of money involved, the topic is extremely sensitive, and one that will become a "legal nightmare".