By Sarah Left, 18 June 1999 00:02
NEWS Margaret Beckett, the leader of the House of Commons, today announced that the government was on target for millennium compliance, with 80 per cent of critical systems already fixed. "Most government departments expect to complete their preparations by July," she said. "Business continuity plans are to be in place and tested by the end of October." Some departments are "causing concern"- notably the Inland Revenue, the National Insurance Contributions Office, the Planning Inspectorate and the DVLA - but Beckett expected that even those offices will meet the deadline. The largest government programme is that of the Ministry of Defence (MOD), with 30,000 systems in total. Andrew Sleigh, the MOD's Director General of Information and Communication Services, said that 70 per cent of his department's critical systems are compliant and the rest will be before the end of the year. Sleigh said that the situation in Kosovo has had very little effect on the MOD's millennium preparations, but he couldn't speak for other NATO countries. "Particular attention has been paid to systems that relate to current operations," he said. "We are as reassured as we can be that all our partners in NATO are doing all they can." Information about the wider public sector, including local authorities and police forces - whose patchy progress has been of greater concern than central government- will be made public in the next National Infrastructure Forum meeting in July.
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