STORY:
Italy Target of Y2K Concerns

Italy's official body to deal with the Y2K problem has just met for the first time.  In a report published by the BBC, the article states the Italian government did create a panel of unpaid experts, but gave it no support staff to carry out its recommendations.

Unlike most developed countries which started to think seriously about the scale of the problem within the last year, if not earlier, Italy has not had a national campaign to raise awareness about the millennium bug.

The head of the committee, Professor Ernesto Bettinelli of Padua University, certainly appears to take the problem seriously according to the BBC. "When I was a junior minister in the last government I stressed the urgency of the problem. Yet we have got this far and everything has still to be done," he said in a published interview. But he was not able to use the 320th day before possible global computer meltdown to work on the problem - he was supervising exams for his students the entire day.

But at the end of this year Rome is likely to be the focus for large numbers of the world's one billion Catholics to commemorate what many believe is the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ. Some 25 million pilgrims are expected to converge on the Italian capital in 2000, unless the lack of Y2K compliance puts them off.

When the BBC tried to call Italy's millennium compliance enforcers on Monday for further information, the operator said that there were no telephones and the office was still under construction.

Source: BBC (Full Text)

DATE: 2/17/99

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