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HONG KONG PROVISIONAL URBAN COUNCIL
MR. CHAN BING-WOON, J.P.
MR. TOMMY CHEUNG YU-YAN, J.P.
ABSENT
THE HON. MOK YING-FAN (on leave)
MR. TAM KWOK-KIU (attending another official meeting)
——
THE SECRETARY, PROVISIONAL URBAN COUNCIL MISS PAULINE WONG
ADDRESS BY CHAIRMAN
CHAIRMAN (in Cantonese):-Members of the Provisional Urban Council, I now call the meeting to order.
1
CONFIRMATION OF THE MINUTES OF MEETING HELD ON 10 JUNE 1997
The minutes of meeting held on 10 June 1997 were confirmed.
II PAPER LAID
The following paper was laid-Report to the Provisional Urban Council by the Secretary, Provisional Urban Council for the month of June 1997.
III QUESTIONS
(1) MR. CHRISTOPHER CHUNG SHU-KUN asked the following question (in Cantonese):-Owing to the limitations of computers and their programming in the early years, the following algorithm errors may occur in the year 2000:
(i) in handling dates by computers, short form is used generally, that is '97' often stands for '1997' and '00' for '2000'. However, some computers may take '00' as '1900':
(ii) many computing programmes keep dates in a six-digit format, i.e. DDMMYY. For instance, '010797' represents 1 July 1997 and '010100' represents 1 January 2000. Therefore, in 2000, there may be chaos and errors in the computing of dates:
(iii) some programmes take ‘99' as a numerical representation or a specific date. Therefore, in 1999, there may be problems in these computer programmes,
(iv) some computers may count it as 1 March 2000 after 28 February 2000,
and omission of the date 29 February 2000 will be occurred,
In the circumstances. I would like to ask the following questions:
(a) Does the Information Technology Centre under the Urban Services Department have any plans to check comprehensively whether all of its computer equipment and application software can adapt to the '2000 millennium' problem?
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