SEBs not prepared for Y2K8217;

NEW DELHI, AUG 21: State electricity boards SEBs, state governments and small and medium scale enterprises are the least prepared for t...

NEW DELHI, AUG 21: State electricity boards SEBs, state governments and small and medium scale enterprises are the least prepared for the Y2K trouble and are therefore major areas of concern. On the whole, however, according to the preliminary findings of the ongoing survey of the National Association of Software and Service Companies Nasscom, India today is in a much better position to deal with the Y2K problem as compared a few months ago.

The sector which draws maximum concern over the Y2K bug is the power sector. According to Nasscom, however, it is a mixed bag. Out of the 315 power generating stations in the country, only 95 stations have varying levels of computerisation. Out of these 95 stations, only 50 are reported to be online. And out of these 50, 18 are already Y2K compliant and the remaining 32 have varying degrees of compliance. Moreover, 45 of the non-online power stations are also reaching good levels of Y2K compliance. Work is on to make about 32-45 of the total 315 power generatingstations in the country Y2K compliant.

Even though the National Thermal Power Corporation NTPC has reached a good level of Y2K compliance, Dewang Mehta, president, Nasscom, feels that problems could arise where embedded systems have been identified for Y2K non-compliance and it is hard to the trace supplier of those chips. However, he said that 8220;state governments need to make efforts to ensure that their respective SEBs and the national power grid do not fail on the turn of the century.8221;

8220;The primary challenge in the remaining 133 days left for the run up to the next millennium is to focus on those areas where the highest probability for failures exists and to ensure that all organisations had contingency or back-up plans to handle any difficulties,8221; he added. According to Mehta, the findings of this ongoing survey reveal that January 1, 2000 will pass with decidedly and relatively less business disruption than is anticipated in some circles. However, a lot of work still needs to be done in sectorslike state electricity boards, some state governments and small and medium enterprises.

As per the Nasscom survey, 97 per cent of the banks in the country will be Y2K compliant by September 30, 1999. On telecom, Mehta said that the telecom services were reaching a fairly good state of Y2K compliance. Nasscom has urged DoT, VSNL, MTNL and STPI to provide written assurance to Indian software companies on Y2K compliance of high-speed datacom links so that software exports are not adversely affected. Railways, aviation, oil and petroleum and satellites, according to the survey, are fairly well prepared for the Y2K problem. The Y2K compliance is much higher in large organisations than in medium enterprises. Only 55 per cent of the small scale sector are aware of the Y2K problem. The indicators for the middle-scale enterprises are encouraging with more than 60 per cent of the respondents to the surveys saying that they have already some form of Y2K compliance programme in place.