SYDNEY, Australia -- Kick back, pop the champagne -- and watch Y1.9K transform into Y2K minute by minute, in global color-coded Web detail.
That will be one way to spend New Year's Eve.
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Assuming the Internet itself doesn't topple over, the Washington-based International Y2K Cooperation Center plans to offer an updated real-time global map on its Web site, outlining Y2K disruptions as they happen throughout the world.
With reports filed every half hour by representatives in 170 countries, the center plans to maintain a country-by-country, global Web-site map, using the colors green, yellow, and red to distinguish degrees of severity in national disruptions.
There are seven categories of societal functions to be graded: energy, communications, finance, air transport, sea transport, health and hospitals, and government.
Not only will visitors see which countries are experiencing disruptions or problems, but in what sectors those failures are occurring. By making this information widely available, the center hopes to reduce the number of calls made to national emergency personnel by the public, domestic agencies, the media, and national governments themselves.
The Cooperation Center was established in February under United Nations auspices with funding from the World Bank. Its purpose is to help coordinate national and international efforts to deal with the coming date change.
Interestingly, one of the biggest Y2K worries at this point is that national and international telephone systems may buckle as everyone picks up the phone shortly after midnight, said Roslyn Docktor, program manager for the center.
"Everyone will be calling their friends," she said. "At this point, we're as concerned about user problems causing disruptions as we are about Y2K itself."
When users first log on to the Web site, they'll see a list of countries, with the exact times, in Greenwich Mean Time, each rolled over their clocks.
Each monitored sector will be in a box with a color. Clicking on that box will show the country representative's actual submitted comments, with details about towns and places where disruptions or shutdowns -- if any -- are occurring.
The comments also will include just how Y2K-related the representative felt individual disruptions were.
After all, it will be New Year's Eve. It could be hard to tell.
The system is being built to handle very heavy traffic, and will likely use more than one server and possibly mirror sites located around the world, but this hasn't been finalized yet, Docktor said.
The site is expected to go live around 28 December, with updates available through the www.iy2kcc.org home page, Docktor said.
Last week, the date of 9 September 1999 was used as an opportunity to test-run the system in 28 countries. No major problems were encountered with the reporting system nor, indeed, with most computer systems in its host nations.
And coupled with the rather boring Global Positioning System clock rollover in late August, you have to wonder whether all this preparation will end up being a big yawn on New Year's Eve.
"Success is no basis for complacency," warns Bruce McConnell, director of the International Y2K Cooperation Center. "Governments must continue to take action and share information on the real Y2K problem to assure a successful rollover."
