Company Rates Countries on Their Level of Preparedness for Year 2000 Complications

International Monitoring, a technology consulting group based in Britain, has ranked nations around the world according to their preparedness for Y2K.

The firm sought third-party verification of each government’s reports on cleansing computers and embedded circuits of the Year 2000 bug, and it based its ratings on the risk of disruptions in a given country’s power, telecoms, finance and transportation infrastructures.

IM predicts 10% of Y2K failures will occur on Jan. 1, with most of the rest occurring in the days and weeks that follow.

Nick Gogerty, an IM senior analyst, said the majority of bug-related troubles won’t be directly related to systems failures but rather follow-up events.

“Most large system errors, and we’ve done research on this, aren’t purely technical in nature,” he says. “They involve two or three coincidental errors. So it’s technology failing followed on by human error.”

The rankings:

Best prepared (least at risk):

Bermuda, Chile, Canada, United States, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Denmark, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Britain, Israel.

Better prepared:

Benin, South Africa, Bahamas, Barbados, Grenada, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, Trinidad & Tobago, Fiji, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Syria.

Moderately prepared:

Italy, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, Bahrain, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Colombia, Costa Rica, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, Philippines, Armenia, Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Georgia, Greece, Botswana, Cape Verde, Chad, Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Rwanda, Seychelles, Tanzania, Argentina, Brazil, Dominica, Dominican Republic.

Less prepared:

Central African Republic, Congo (former Zaire), Ethiopia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Lesotho, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, Swaziland, Gambia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Cambodia, Laos, Samoa, Vietnam, Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Romania, Russia, Turkey

Worst prepared (Most at risk):

Liberia, Madagascar, Niger, Somalia, Belize, El Salvador, Bangladesh, Moldova, Tajikistan, Egypt, Oman, Qatar.

Inadequate information:

Angola, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Comoros, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Mali, Sao Tome & Principe, Sierra Leone, Togo, Uganda, Cuba, Guyana, Nicaragua, Azerbaijan, Macau, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Belarus, Cyprus, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Algeria, Iraq, Libya.