Unprepared councils face Y2K exposure

By Chris Barton

The 19 local authorities who are putting their communities at risk by failing to consider the impact of the millennium bug on their services will be named next week if Local Government New Zealand gets its way.

The group, which represents local councils, has asked the Auditor-General for the names so it can release them at the end of a Y2K summit for the 86 authorities in Wellington next week.

But the summit itself will be held behind closed doors, despite the Government's moving to encourage the free exchange of information on the issue with a "Good Samaritan" law.

The chief executive of Local Government NZ, Carol Stigley, said the summit would be "richer in detail and frankness" if it was closed to the public.

She agreed that local government had a responsibility to tell residents about how well prepared it was to cope with the century date change problem, but said councils needed to know more themselves before they talked to the public.

Also attending will be representatives from the banking, telecommunications and electricity supply sectors. Prime Minister Jenny Shipley will be among the speakers.

The Y2K Summit, next Wednesday, comes after the Auditor-General's damning report on the lack of progress by local bodies on the millennium bug problem. A Y2K Readiness Commission survey also raised concerns about the continuity of water and wastewater services.

About a quarter of local authorities did not know if the components in their equipment were date-compliant, and more than 80 per cent relied on assurances from suppliers rather than doing their own testing.

Carol Stigley said the embedded data-aware chips in the equipment were difficult to test without shutting the whole system down and disrupting services.

She hoped "warts and all" presentations from Waitakere, Hamilton and Wanganui councils would shed light on these and other Y2K concerns.

She would ask the meeting for permission to release a summary of local authority readiness, and wants the Auditor-General to identify the local authorities that had not developed a Y2K testing programme or drawn up disaster recovery plans.