The Hong Kong SAR Government has been very thorough in raising Y2K awareness throughout the community and I am sure Hong Kong will manage much better than many other places. On the other hand this is not a time to be complacent.
Dr N. Ng, Director of Computer Centre, held a briefing session on October 27th to give guidance on the drawing up of contingency plans by departments. Subsequently copies of the guidelines were sent to every department head and Y2K co-ordinator. The deadline for completion of all contingency plans was 30th November.
On 14th November the network and email systems of all institutions were tested to ensure that communications with the University Grant Committee are fully Y2K compliant. There had previously been a full scale integrated test of university administration systems to make sure that the interfaces between them will function properly next year.
In the final stages leading up to the year-end, two top level committees were formed. The first is the University Y2K Contingency Task Force chaired by Pro-Vice-Chancellor Professor Felix Wu and which includes representatives from offices with special university-wide Y2K responsibilities such as the Computer Centre, Registry, Finance Office, Estates Office, Safety Office, Office of Student Affairs, and a student representative. This policy forming group in turn has established the Y2K Emergency Response Team which is convened by Dr P.T. Ho, Deputy Director of the Computer Centre. It will co-ordinate any actions necessary in case of occurrence of any Y2K-related problems.
All Computer Centre staff will be on standby throughout the critical periods and most of them will be on duty in the university on both the 31st December and 1st January. Our first real test will be at 7pm on the 31st when New Zealand reaches the year 2000 and we must check that network communication is functioning. The Computer Centre operations staff will be on full alert in monitoring our systems and networks from 6pm on December 31, 1999 to 5pm on January 1, 2000.
We believe that our University is Y2K ready and Y2K prepared.
D.P. Carthy
Tel: 2859 0535
Email: dpc@cc.hku.hk