1997 REVIEW: The year of blitz and PCs

In 1997 the government took the year 2000 problem to Taskforce and then sprung into Action

Asked about the millennium problem at the beginning of this year, most people on the street would have guessed that it had something to do with a Dome in Greenwich. Now just about everyone in the UK has some awareness that computers could have a problem with the change to the new century, writes Colin Barker.

In the UK, Robin Guenier and his Taskforce 2000 team should take much of the credit for this. Charged with raising awareness of the issue, Guenier's efforts have been extremely successful.

The big news from the government came when Margaret Beckett, president of the Board of Trade, chose the Labour Party Conference in October to announce the formation of a new group, Action 2000, that would turn awareness into action.

The decision to appoint high-profile Oftel boss Don Cruickshank as head of Action 2000 drew applause. The fact that he could only spare one day a week for one of the most important jobs in IT drew derision.

Three months after the formation of Action 2000, a full-time director has not yet been appointed. Cruelly, the organisation has been labelled In-Action 2000 by some.

In the wider world, there were scares over PCs, embedded chips and systems in crucial parts of the infrastructure, such as the utilities and the NHS.

On the PC side, Bill Gates maintained that there were no real problems with PCs in general - or his company's software in particular - despite a public roasting by consultant Peter de Jager.

Microsoft software supports four-digit year fields, but these only work if people use them. Two-digit fields, the most popular choice, are not well supported by some products.

But this is nothing when compared with the problems in the PC hardware itself. Most PCs have a system clock, a Bios clock and at least one other clock - all of which may be prone to failure. Bios fixes for millennium problems are now two-a-penny, but as various reports outlined this year, many of them do not work well, if at all.

Embedded chips cause even more problems for manufacturing companies and utilities alike. The latter did some good work in raising awareness of their problems, and companies such as Railtrack won praise for adopting a reasonably open and honest approach to the problem.

Once again, the government became the focus of attention as it continued to delay the results of its own audit of the requirements of central government, the public sector and the NHS. The public has a right to know if year 2000 bugs will be fixed by the deadline, and how the cost of these fixes will hit the taxpayer if they are not.