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SCMP Reporter

Senior administrators at computer service centres at tertiary institutions fear the $56 million granted by the Legislative Council to tackle the millennium bug is too little, too late.

  The senior administrators said although they were satisfied with the progress being made in tackling the problem, there was no guarantee that the systems would work 100 per cent.

  They were also worried that some departments did not fully appreciate the severity of the problem.

 A University Grants Committee spokesman said it was still awaiting funding from the Finance Bureau.

  'We knew the Y2K matter could no longer be delayed and we have tried our best to push the Government to help the institutes. But time is needed for the grants with of ficial procedures,' he said. Once they received the money, it would go to the institutes 'as soon as possible'.

 Nelson Ngan Man-piu, Assistant Director of Chinese University of Hong Kong's (CUHK) Computer Services Centre, said the centre could only finish by next September, followed by testing and implementation due to limited manpower.

 'The government funding was too late. We wanted to start work earlier, but we had no money to hire extra manpower,' he said.

 Dr Ng Nam, director of the University of Hong Kong's (HKU) Computer Centre and head of the Joint University Computer Centre, said 65 per cent of the school's computer systems, hardware and applications were Y2K compliant.

   The university, which will receive $9.16 million, is planning to complete all upgrades by next June.

  'We had taken the Y2K problem into consideration many years ago, so any newly- purchased hardware and software should be compliant.'  Dr Ng said the code identifications and modifications were labour-intensive tasks and needed extra hardware to test the production system.

 Devices that did not use clock functions for calculation had been of great concern and the situation was potentially dangerous.

 The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, which has about 6,000 computer devices on campus, established a 12-member taskforce early last year.

  Richard Li King-hang, director of the office of IT services, said half of them were compliant. The rest were expected to be ready by June. Those too old to be upgraded or repaired would be replaced.

 City University of Hong Kong faces fewer Y2K problems than some universities because it has fewer old computer systems and hardware.

  Its $5.6 million grant will be used to hire three computer officers to trace source codes for self-developed software and to upgrade hardware.

 The director of Computing Services Centre, Poon Kee-hoo, said the compliance project would be completed by late next year.

   'The main problem lies in the exchange of data with outside parties, only 40 per cent of which has been completed,' Mr Poon said.

  He expected the administrative software upgrade to be finished by next June, leaving time for testing and implementation of new production systems.

 Hong Kong Baptist University will spend its $3.11 million mostly on upgrading the PABX (Public Automatic Bridge Exchange) phone system and on hiring programmers for redevelopment of administrative systems.

  The director of Comput ing and Telecommunications Services Centre, Joseph Leung Kin-wing, said the whole campus-wide network and 80 per cent of the centrally-managed 2,500 computers were already Y2K compliant.

  Some hardware and software of host machines would be upgraded before June, while computers running on DOS or Windows 95 platforms would be upgraded to Windows 98 next summer.

 HKUST claimed it would be affected the least and requested only $5.5 million.

  According to Lawrence Law Hing-yim, associate director of the Centre of Computing Services and Telecommunications, its major problem was the interface with outside institutions and companies.

 Lingnan College, which will receive $2.45 million, said its Y2K project was underway and it was confident of its completion by the turn of the millennium.

WHERE THE CASH IS GOING  City University, $5.6 million  Baptist University, $3.11 million  Lingnan College, $2.45 million  Chinese University, $9.84 million  Polytechnic University, $12 million  University of Science and Technology, $5.5 million  University of Hong Kong, $9.16 million  Hong Kong Institute of Education, $8.6 million 



Race to beat the 'bug' hots up