ned on quickly if needed. One would suppose that it is their solutions to Year 2000 problem. In the contrary, the department is far along in remediation of their 12 year old mission critical system. The Prudential Insurance Company of America has a broad contingency plan that covers application software, internal infrastructure, and external partners. Each of these area has a plan for not meeting January 1 deadline, if it fails after January 1, and if a problem is not discovered until later. Similarly, Geico Corp. of Maryland plans to include manual backups for some mission critical automated processes by keeping paper copies of data that would allow cross-checking of data if disputes arises from online transactions (4). Not only companies need Year 2000 contingency plans, but also needs to test those plans. Even if remediation programs are going well, companies should have contingency plans. No matter how much care is taken, some systems will break unexpectedly, as Murphy’s law predicts. Take BankBoston for example. It operates in 24 countries and exchanges information electronically with about 500 institutions. There is always the potential that its own system would be corrupted if these partners have not prepared adequately. Furthermore, BankBoston lends money to other businesses that must also be Year 2000 complaint. One cannot assume suppliers and partners won’t have Year 2000 problems that will impact the business(5). Build year 2000 contingency plans on top of existing disaster recovery plans. Like all disaster recovery plans, the Year 2000 plans should be tested under as realistic conditions as possible. Companies looking to establish a contingency plan should(4): Cover application software, internal infrastructure and external partners. Most companies are focussing on application software. But the other infrastructure problems can be as big a problem – how does get into premises if lock would not open or place...
