I'm reading the Globe and Mail today and on the editorial page there is an
article from Alberta. Now it seems that Chris Stockman - a cabinet minister
of something, asked for quotes to fix the medical computers re Y2K and he
was given a number of estimates in the $250 million dollar range. The
article pointed out that Chris had suggested that original equipment
manufacturers should bear some of the costs as they originally sold this
equipment with no warning of the downside - ie the Y2K problem, citing as
precedent, the tobacco industry payments to various States for the medical
problems caused by tobacco which they concealed. Now, aside from the
astronomical sum - and bear in mind this is only to fix the medical
computers - the thought occurred to me that, every newspaper in the country
should be filled with ads for qualified personnel to work on these and other
systems, and yet when I read the technical want ads, I have yet to see an
add for personnel to work on Y2K problems.
As this correction is basically a labour problem, not a capital equipment
problem, where is the demand for all these people to use up the $250 million
that is being asked for? That is question # 1
Now, assuming a shortage of qualified personnel, I would expect every
training institute in the country to be offering courses in programming
languages to get people up to speed to work on Y2K problems. As most of the
work, I have read, requires no great programming skill, rather it is the
reading of millions of lines of code looking for date sensitive code and
then applying replacement code, it would seem to me that many people could
be trained in a 3 month course to be a mini specialist in some aspect of a
computer language. As I look at the ads of training schools, I do not see
an offers for training to become a Y2K correction specialist and most
courses in their outlines do not even mention the need to become expert in
Y2K problems. Second question - what is going on in the training field to
supply those capable enough to work on this problem.
I would appreciate some thoughts on these questions.
Respectfully,
Thomas Lunde
