Most local banks ready for millennium bug

Most local banks ready for millennium bug

JAKARTA (JP): Most of the country's banks are ready to cope
with the computer glitch in the new millennium, according to the
latest assessment by the government-sponsored Y2K Task Force.

The Task Force said in its report made available to The
Jakarta Post on Thursday that the country's banking sector is 95
percent Y2K compliant.

The report said Bank Indonesia (the central bank) had its
information technology system remediated, supply chain
management, embedded system management, communications and
contingency plans checked, fixed and tested in October.

The central bank's electronic clearing system in Jakarta,
which was developed in 1997 to cover about 87 percent of daily
clearing volume in Indonesia, is Y2K compliant.

Bank Indonesia's facilities, which are ready for the
millennium bug also include its automated clearing system, which
is a paper-based clearing system using reader-sorter machines, in
Jakarta, Surabaya and Medan, as well as its semi automated
clearing system using stand alone PC's at all its branches,
according to the report.

The Task Force report also said that at least 85 percent of
the 167 commercial banks operated in Indonesia had reached their
Y2K ready status by August.

The 141 Y2K ready banks include about 20 major banks, which
are considered as highly dependent on computer systems and
together hold about 93 percent of the market.

The report, however, does not provide the names of the banks.

The Indonesian Y2K Task Force is a government-sponsored
institution established to supervise the Y2K anticipation
programs run by the country's essential infrastructures, such as
banking, telecommunications, energy and transportation.

In order to speed up and synchronize Y2K preparation with
other commercial banks, Bank Indonesia is scheduled to run an
industry-wide test on all banks later this month to check on the
banks' final preparations as well as contingency plans to
anticipate possible computer failure during the date rollover to
Jan. 1, 2000.

Y2K refers to problems computerized systems will face at the
turn of the century, when their two-digit-year counters fail to
distinguish between 1900 and 2000.

The glitch may cause computers to shut down or fail to
function properly. Power supplies may drop, telephones and
transportation systems may stop operation and automated banking
transactions may fail.

The United States-based Gartner Group, a Y2K-compliance
monitoring body, said in a recent report Indonesia was among some
30 developing nations most prone to the Y2K problems with some 66
percent of businesses in the countries possibly affected.

Bank Indonesia has prepared the National Risk Mitigation and
Contingency Preparation to anticipate any possible failure in
computer systems.

Among the steps in the mitigation and contingency preparations
are the establishment of a government blanket guarantee for
depositories for the next six months, discount windows as the
short term fund for helping banks in the condition of a mismatch
and production of more bank notes to ensure a sufficient cash
supply.

The bank recently said that it planned to impose a one-day
holiday on Dec. 30 for banks to print all data as a backup in
case of system failure. (cst)