Perspective: Whimpering into the year 2000 wind

by Colin Barker

It did not take too long for the government?s millennium taskforce to attract the sobriquet In-Action 2000. For a body with such a short planned lifetime ? charged with forcing the nation to come to terms with a problem with an immovable deadline ? any hesitancy or tardiness was bound to be jumped on.

The In-Action label was first applied when it took Action 2000 more than three months to name a director. It could be heavily reapplied after its latest meeting with the press last week.

This is a body that does not seem to know what it should be doing. It has no sense of priorities and no sense of where the problems really lie. This statement may appear harsh, but I think it can be justified.

In the latest issue of his newsletter, Millennium Watch, journalist and analyst Ian Hugo takes Action 2000 to task for the paucity of its planning and initiatives so far. He points out that much of the information that appears in its newsletters and on its Web site consists largely of material already covered by others.

In other words, this is material generated by the perceived need to do something (anything), rather than by the judgement that such information is worthwhile.

As Hugo writes: ?Our greatest criticism is that it has taken a seventh of the time that remained when [Action 2000] was launched to produce nothing that is not already available and of better quality.?

Hugo knows what he is talking about. He was one of the first analysts and journalists to get on to the year 2000 problem and to cover it in any depth. He has worked almost full-time on the issue for more than two years.

Why has this happened? It is quite simple really. We had an organisation for raising awareness and channelling action on the year 2000 problem. It was called Taskforce 2000, and was run very effectively by Robin Guenier with the (unpaid) help of Ian Hugo ? among others.

As we wrote when it was pushed aside, Taskforce 2000 was a maverick voice, be-yond government control. It dared to press for Whitehall funding at a time when the government did not want to listen. Action 2000 is a government body, run and financed by what Private Eye famously calls the Department of Timidity and Inaction.

Accordingly, we have information sheets that contain little information, Web sites that do not seem to work and helplines that are unobtainable. We also ? poignantly ? had a press conference last week at which the well-intentioned Don Cruikshank announced that he would be pushing for an extra #10 million in funding for the next year or so.

The maverick voice has gone. We are left with a body whose primary task appears to be deflecting unpleasant byproducts from the fan should the government fail to solve the millennium problem. A body not for us, but for the government.

As such, it seems to be doing a very good job.

? Colin Barker is chief reporter on Computing.