Gujarat wakes up to Y2K scare

GANDHINAGAR, NOV 1: With the new millennium barely 60 days away, promising to bring along a myriad of Y2K problems, the State Government ...

GANDHINAGAR, NOV 1: With the new millennium barely 60 days away, promising to bring along a myriad of Y2K problems, the State Government seems to have woken up to the fact that several of its departments are unprepared. It has asked various departments to obtain Y2K compliance certificates from either the National Informatics Centre NIC or Indext-b, a state agency, soon.

Its earlier deadline of August 31 had come and gone, without several departments obtaining the certification. 8220;We are naturally, worried,8221; admits a senior officer in the Information Technology IT Department, but hastens to add, 8220;We still have enough time to make computers Y2K compliant in all government and semi-government establishments and hope to get compliance certificates by November 15. Reminders have been issued to departments to upgrade their computers at the earliest.8221;

Saumil Raval, chief executive to IT Minister Bimal Shah, said though the heads of some government departments and boards and corporations had alreadyobtained the Y2K compliance certificates, all of them have not submitted these to the IT department.

8220;We are mainly concentrating on key departments and corporations, while teams of experts drawn from NIC and Indext-b have been put on job to carry out extensive checks on computers in other government sections in the Sachivalaya,8221; he said. Raval said, most of the computers installed in government departments 8220;have Microsoft Windows 8217;95 and 8217;98 and Intel servers, which are already Y2K compliant8221;. But, there are some 486 machines which have to be upgraded. Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister P K Laheri said it was the Bureau of Economics and Statistics that would have a Y2K problem, as obsolete 286 and 386 models were still being used there. 8220;The government has initiated efforts to replace them with the latest models and upgrade their programmes8221;, he said.

Laheri said in certain departments, Pentium processors were introduced in the 486 models after upgrading their old programmes, while in othercases the government had purchased new Y2K compliant Pentium models at a cost of Rs 5 crore and installed them last year.

He said the important autonomous government bodies like the Gujarat Electricity Board GEB and the State Road Transport Corporation had already obtained Y2K compliance certificates, while other departments like Pay and Accounts, Treasury, Irrigation, Pension and Provident Fund and Gujarat State Financial Services Ltd were under process of obtaining the certificates.

Minister of State for Energy Kaushik Patel said his department had launched efforts on a war-footing to make the computers installed in various GEB power units Y2K compliant. Private power generation and distribution companies like Ahmedabad Electricity Company, Surat Electricity Company and Essar Power Ltd had also initiated similar measures. 8220;We are taking all measures to prevent power generation units, the grid system and other commercial activities from being affected by the Y2K problem,8221; Patel said.

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Some of theGEB units, including the one at Wanakbori, Gandhinagar Unit 5, Utran and Kadana, had already been given Y2K compliant certificates by BHEL, he said. The process to make Gandhinagar power units 3 and 4, Panandhro unit 3, Dhuvaran Vibration Control and Load System Y2K compliant is on, and is expected to be over shortly, he says.