In January, a World Bank report estimated that only 21 of 139 developing countries had taken concrete steps to address the year 2000 problem. The report went on to anticipate year 2000 impacts on power, telecommunications, energy, food distribution and medical care in developing countries. That bleak picture means another layer of misery for the developing world and additional year 2000 burdens for U.S. companies doing business abroad. But the good news here is that the scope of the year 2000 problem has forced a few industries to work together to obtain and share information, develop resources and provide help around the world. By collecting data on infrastructure issues around the world and issuing recommendations, these organizations have, in effect, become general resources for year 2000 project managers everywhere.
Membership is free.
One subgroup, called Custody 2000, has identified several dozen top custodial institutions that safeguard currency and securities. Each Custody 2000 member is auditing the year 2000 preparedness of several of these custodians, eliminating the need for audits by other institutions. The document on risk management, for example, offers suggestions for handling risks such as simultaneous failures in multiple systems and locations, cascading failures that build on one another and external failures. The group has developed templates for countries to assess their status, and as responses trickle in, it's posting them on its Web site for anyone to read. So for the rest of the year, Global 2000 will focus on contingency planning, such as helping organizations plan for manual work-arounds and fallbacks.