Mike W Bryant
Northern News Services

NNSL (Aug 11/99) - According to city officials, Yellowknife will be well prepared for Y2K as the end of the millennium draws near.

"The city is almost complete its in-house testing plan," said Tim Mercer, city clerk.

"We were planning to have our tests finished by July 31 and, with the exception of a few systems, everything has been right on schedule.

Apparently, only one minor problem has been discovered in the city's computer software since tests began last October.

"We had one minor glitch," said Mercer. "We started re-issuing our business licences in March for those that expire in March 2000.

"The computer read them as having expired in 1900 but we caught that before the licences were issued."

According to Mercer, other critical dates that might have led to computer problems have come and gone with no noticeable effect. One date that computer analysts fear, September 9, has yet to pass by but Mercer purports that it is unlikely to cause any problems for the City.

"September 9th is suppose to be critical because in computer language, nine is an error code," Mercer said. "September 9 in numeric codes comes out as 9999 and the computer may read this as an error but other critical dates have come and gone without any problems."

Prem Persad, systems manager for the city, reports that all the city computer hardware components have been tested and passed and now only a few software files remain to be checked out.

"We are pretty much finished doing our tests," Persad said.

"We're going through each machine one by one.

"We actually change the day to December 31 and check it the next morning and so far, everything has turned out all right.

"Right now we're just checking the software. All the hardware has been done and we expect to be completely finished by the end of September. I don't see any problems."

Purchasing and Risk Manager for the City, Roy Clarke, who is responsible for checking over the systems reports for every department with in the city administration, concurs with Persad.

"Sixty per cent of the systems have been rated so far," Clarke said.

"I've gone over everything pretty much except public works but I expect that 40 per cent to go by quickly."

"We'll be having a contingency plan meeting at the end of August," continued Mercer.

"We'll be planning for housing, food and shelter.

"We'll also be practising table-top exercises, which is scenario planning.

"In November, we will be consulting with the public in preparation for Y2K. We will be waiting until then because we want it fresh in people's minds."