Glitch-free Sept 9 no reason to forget Y2K

By Nick Stanley

Although September 9 was troublefree, key service and utility organisations are urging New Zealanders not to become complacent about potential problems from the Y2K bug.

The director of the Y2K Readiness Commission, Clare Pinder, said the country had come through September 9 very well, with no reports of problems caused by computers mistaking the date 9/9/99 for a command to cease functions or perform a special task.

She said 9/9/99 problems were not nearly as complex or widespread as Y2K problems, which could cause far more disruption to computer-based services.

Clare Pinder said the lack of problems on September 9 illustrated that the work New Zealand businesses had done in preparation for Y2K was very advanced. But she warned against complacency.

"Hopefully, all the work we have done will minimise the risks, but there is no room for complacency. There is a lot of work to be done over the next three months, testing systems and business continuity plans."

The Ministry for Emergency Management used September 9 to test incident monitoring systems it will use on December 31.

Spokesman David Schnellenberg said the test had gone very well and had given them confidence that the monitoring system was fully functional and effective.

From 10 pm to 2 am on the night of September 8 and 9 the ministry's operations centre in Wellington received 51 test reports sent in by 300 utility and emergency services nationwide.

Sixteen regional monitoring centres collated and forwarded the data to the national centre in the Beehive basement.

The ministry then processed the information, entering it in a geographical information system (GIS) before publishing it in regional maps on its special web site www.watchnz.govt.nz.

Mr Schnellenberg said the amount of data had given the system a thorough test, including the backup UHF radio communications and the web site, which would be the focus of the world on December 31.

"We received over 1200 hits during September 9, three-quarters of which were from New Zealand.

"The whole system, including mirror sites in the US and UK, has been set up to handle a million hits on the 31st."