W ho you gonna call to bust those bugs? The Phillipines wants to be your first stop. “Pino Y2K Initiative” is the Philippines’ latest project, aimed at cashing in on year 2000 (Y2K) bug fixes for companies, schools, and software firms worldwide.
The country’s Department of Science and Technology (DOST) is putting PhP3 million into the training of some 100,000 Filipinos to beef up the country’s supply of computer programmers that can be fielded to tackle Millennium Bug projects in the shortrun and other information technology (IT) projects in the long-run.
Officials hope their PinoY2K initiative will earn the country US83-6 billion, about 1% of the estimated global market for Y2K projects.
Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) assistant secretary Edsel T Custodio notes that the Millennium Bug problem has three major components: impact assessment or needs analysis, conversion work, and rigorous tests.
DOST secretary William Padolina said that the Y2K initiative is designed to make the Philippines more visible in the inter- national IT community. In the long term, Padolina pointed out, the initiative should make the country as competitive as India and other top software suppliers.
Padolina said that the Philip pines Government has identified the United States, Japan and Europe, as the “biggest markets” for Y2K solutions.
While admitting that the Millennium Bug problem is a short term opportunity for the Philip pines, Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) secretary Cesar B Bautista, asserted, it should give the Filipino knowledge workers a high profile for their ability to tackle more complex solutions. It’s a great introduction to the big spenders.”
He emphasized, ‘we’ve got the brain force to help big spenders to toast New Year’s Day 2000 without worries about technology going haywire. But we’ll have to sound our trumpets now as loud, if not louder, than our competitors. Cli- ents must know we’re world-class solvers of their high-tech worries.”
Philippines software houses like Software Ventures and STA & Associates have reportedly notified Bautista that at present, they have the software to market and the core of knowledge workers to service clients.
At the heart of the Year 2000 problem is the use of six digit date fields (MM:DD:YY) by most applications. Since only two digits are used for the year field, when the calendar flips from 1999 to the year 2000, many applications will either crash, misbehave, or simply freeze.
