The year-2000 crisis is about to become an international incident. |
The U.S. State Department on Sept. 15
released its biannual consular advisory -- this time including a list of
countries expected to experience severe year-2000 issues.
Industry analysts expect that Brazil,
Indonesia, Italy, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Thailand are some of the candidates
for the list. That means companies operating in those countries and sending
business travelers to them need to begin thinking about developing action plans.
Even prior to the State Department report,
some major U.S. corporations with global operations have already started to make
plans of their own.
"There will be small, [two-person] teams
that go into every single plant [worldwide], prior to people going back to work,
to make sure everything is operational," said Kathleen Vokes, a spokeswoman
for Ford Motor, in Dearborn, Mich.
Although Ford is not placing any travel
restrictions on its employees, according to Vokes, a recent year-2000 report
from the Gartner Group suggested that companies should reconsider sending staff
on foreign travel for business and should review their dependence on
international parcel services to conduct business.
Travel-related issues are the key concern at
the Le Meridien Hotel chain, which has hotels on every continent except
Antarctica.
The Global Distribution Services (GDS)
system, used around the world by airlines, hotels, and rental car companies for
making reservations, is just one potential weak link, according to Le Meridien's
IT department.
"GDS is so big and has so many databases
and information, it would take years to check all of it for [year-2000]
compliance," said Max Malek, the IT manager at Le Meridien, in Beverly
Hills, Calif. "As of today I do not have a confirmation letter from any GDS
system that they are compliant."
Malek has this advice for all travelers:
"Get a paper copy of all your travel arrangements."
Indeed, Le Meridien is now requiring fax
copies of all reservations that will be input manually on local systems.
Contingency plans at Le Meridien also include
setting up a U.S. dollar-to-foreign currency information table with the exchange
rate figured manually twice per day.
"We will do that until we feel that the
computer figures are 100 percent correct," Malek said.
The hotels' credit card transactions and
employee 401K contributions, which are typically batched and sent to the bank,
are now also manually copied and filed.
According to John O'Keefe, a State Department
spokesman in the Y2K office of management, the Department's forthcoming biannual
Consular Information Sheets will include year-2000 readiness assessments for 172
nations. Those sheets will help people make their own travel decisions by
indicating potential breakdowns in such key areas as telecommunications, energy,
and transportation.
"The sheets will say, for example,
Country X may have power distribution system difficulties, so travelers could
expect power outages for some periods after Jan. 1," O'Keefe said.
Following right behind the State Department,
the Federal Aviation Administration, along with the U.S. Department of
Transportation, will go online in September with its worldwide assessment of
airline safety. The assessment will include evaluations of the readiness status
of air-traffic control systems, global airport infrastructure including
security, and the aircraft themselves. The information will be available at www.dot.gov/fly2k.
Major global computer services companies such
as Compaq and IBM are in the midst of preparing to beef up their worldwide
services to support their customers.
"We have plans for coverage in the
countries around Y2K problems. The person heading up that operation is right now
touring Asia, doing operational reviews around Y2K," said Tom Sadtler,
director of marketing programs at Compaq Customer Services, in Stow, Mass.
One IBM representative said the services
division is asking its employees to be flexible in setting working hours during
the new year.
A big part of the problem is that no one can
say for sure what might happen.
"You must understand that when talking
about energy, water, [and] telecommunications, the predictability is not real
high. For Consular Information Sheets to have simple declarative sentences is
not so easy," O'Keefe said.
However, others outside of the government are
more willing to offer some details.
"Brazil is on everybody's list of
important countries that are quite behind. In Western Europe it may very well be
Italy," said Edward Yardeni, chief economist and global investment
strategist at Deutsche Bank Securities, in New York.
According to Yardeni, travelers should also
look closely at Indonesia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and many other
countries whose IT infrastructures are less than stable.
Travel from developing countries to the
United States may also present a problem.
"Whatever type of reservation [any
travelers] are booking at the year 2000 or beyond, we might have trouble getting
them or understanding what dates they want or their date of arrival if their
systems aren't Y2K compliant," Malek said.
Depending on the severity of the situation,
it is possible that the State Department will call for the evacuation of U.S.
citizens from certain countries, according to O'Keefe.
"If in fact there is a decision for
authorized departure [of Department personnel], then we would - when that
decision is made - inform the public. There is no double standard for our people
and the American public," O'Keefe said.
The Chinese government has its own way of
ensuring that its airlines will be year-2000 compliant, according to Andy Kyte,
in the Year 2000 Strategies department at Gartner, in Stamford, Conn.
According to Kyte, the government of China
recently issued a directive requiring that the top executives of airlines
"must be in the air on 1 Jan. 2000."
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Last modified: November 08, 2002