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Content

• Y2K Last Report
• Activities of the Centre

As the sun rose on Jordan on the first day of the millenium, and as the National Task Force for the Y2K problem felt O.K., the signs of glitches occurring in Jordan became more faint. All computers functioned quite well on January1, 2000 like they did the day before; lights were shining, water was still running from taps and there were no telephone or power blackouts. On the international front, bank transactions ran smooth, nuclear reactors did not melt and no glitches appeared in neither China nor Russia. Some analyst claimed that the Y2K was hype and that the whole problem became a controversy as some people believed that if preparations were not adequately made in advance, the world would have been in chaos. On the otherhand, the National Task Force of the Y2K believes that some glitches will be apparent weeks or even months into the first year of the millenium in spite of all the preparations that were taken during 1999. A summary of activities of the NTF is included and documented in the National Information Centre for reference:

Jordan started the awareness campaign for the Y2K problem early in 1997. It took the National Information Centre a while until it demonstrated the importance of the problem to the government to consider the problem one of its highest national priorities. Consequently, the problem was given due importance. During the second half of 1998 a Higher Ministerial Committee (HMC) headed by the Prime Minister himself and consisted of six ministers, was established.

HMC elected the President of the National Information Center NIC to head the secretariat of the National Task Force (NTC).

The main objectives of the National Task Force (NTF) were to coordinate the Y2K activities in all the sectors and report to the government on their progress. The duties included the following functions:

Preparation of an action plan at the national level. The national action plan requires addressing the problem by identifying all potential risks and threats to the major operations and critical sectors. All sectors have been required to provide the NTF with action plans, progress reports and contingency plans.

1. Draw a work plan that consists of a work strategy including the names of the project team that represents all sectors that are involved in the Y2K problem including representatives from strategic organizations from the private sector.
2. Adopt the Y2K standard plan to be applied by the involved institutions
3. Develop a work definition of the scope of work including:

1. Institutions to be involved
2. Classification of institutions
3. Establishing sub-teams

4. Develop evaluation methodology
5. Develop reporting mechanism.
6. Set up standard forms to be used nationally
7. Develop contingency plan guidelines and structure with case studies

Intensive awareness programs and guidelines in leaflet format that were distributed to the public sector regularly raised the awareness in the problem. It included information on:

1. Common products and possible problems
2. Inventory forms and procedures to facilitate the diagnosis and analysis of the problem
3. Questionnaire to evaluate the status of the Y2K of the specific institution including questions about the main servers form, PC's , communication facilities form and computer applications form; systems SW (Operating systems, Databases, Computer languages.) and embedded systems.

Continuous contact of the NTF with the different institutions and distribution of different kinds of plans and results provided an awareness ground for the problem also. This included:

1. Distribution of the Project (overall plan).

1. Circulation of documents explaining the impact of the problem on different organizations.

1. Identification of the scope of work and a classification list of the most critical to the less critical institutions.
2. Election of 5 sub-teams to follow up the institutions
3. Preparation of the initial evaluation for the involved institutions
4. Develop a database from the inventory collected from institutions

1. Conducting a set of seminars for various sectors in the country.
2. The Distribution of a CD containing Y2K technical issues and procedures to fix the major problems in IT systems, prepared by the NTF
3. Field visits by the members of the NTF covered sum (140) public and private organization to provide advice on how to address the problem .

Newspapers, TV talk shows and interviews and lectures were techniques used and directed to raise the awareness of the layman.

Money was allocated from separate budgets of each ministry and official department. Some computers were upgraded to meet the demands of the new century. Over 130 institutions in the private and the public sector completed the required compliance before the end of the last century. All local banks were Y2K compliant before the June 1999. Although we know now that there were no major problems during the transition, there were a number of amusing accidents documented in some web sites.

0. The President of the Centre participated in the Annual European Conference on Information Society and Technology from 22-26 December in Helsinki, Finland. The European Union organized the Conference and it is considered one of the main scientific events of the last century. The 3000 participants included researchers, businessmen and decision-makers from all over the world. Discussions revolved around the information society and the effect of IT and communication technology on education and commerce. Developments in theories and applications and the services presented for the development of the information society were also emphasized.

The President of NIC chaired the meeting of the Euro-Medis about cooperation between the European Union countries and some Mediterranean countries in information technology.

Four hundred organizations in information technology participated in the concurrent International Exhibition for Information Technology and Communication that was . It included applied and theoretical projects funded by the EU for the development of the information society.

0. On 5/12/1999, a national seminar under the title” Jordan’s Readiness for the Y2K Problem” was held under the auspices of the National Information Centre. Two hundred participants from 130 organizations attended the seminar. Each organization presented a paper about its Y2K compliance status and the contingency plan that were prepared to meet the challenges that might take place on New Year Eve and during the year 2000.

0. According to the contingency plans of sensitive sectors, different task force groups belonging to different sectors mobilized in New Year Eve in anticipation of any bug related to the Y2K. The National Task Force also spent the night in the National Information Centre. The night passed peacefully.