[Italy's National Institute of Statistics]

    The National Intitute of Statistics (ISTAT), in cooperation with the "Comitato Anno 2000", Italy's Year 2000 Government Authority, has completed a survey to assess the status of the remediation activities enacted by Italian small and medium enterprises in tackling the problems posed to their Information Technology (I.T.) Systems by the Year 2000 date change, the so called millennium bug.  The survey, which follows area assessments of the Nation's major industrial systems and public and private services by the "Comitato Anno 2000",  provides a significant contribution to the understanding of the Italian economic system remediation efforts when only a few months are left to the end of the millennium.

    Surveyed sample is representative of a universe of about 58,000 industrial, commercial and service enterprises with 20 thru 250 employees. Telephone Interviews took place on July 10, 1999, and covered questions that are common to similar polls in other industrial countries, so as to assure international comparability of obtained results.

    A second survey of the same business universe has been scheduled in October, to assess further progress as compared with present status.

    The first figures are indicative of "Year 2000" date change awareness level:  only 1.8% of the respondents were totally unaware;  3.6% had yet to undertake any actions due to lack of information;  9.8%, albeit informed, had not yet adopted any specific action plan, while the remaining 84.8% were fully aware and had taken actions to resolve date change related problems.

    I.T. system conversion appears mainly focused on business administrative areas, although substantial activities are to be witnessed in business process, customer relations and supply chain areas, while progress in the research and development area appears sharply lower.  Moreover, due to the complexity of the "Year 2000 Issue",  78.7% of the respondents resorted to outsourcing (outside contracting).  Of these, 70% have stated that they are keeping a close watch on progress status of externally contracted projects.

    80,7% of the respondents that have made operational decisions have nearly completed I.T. system and software applications inventory and (79.2%) preparation of executive projects, including allocation of necessary human and financial resources.

    Executive projects were 85% completed, while the remainder are expected to be completed within 1999.  Projects are mostly directed to converting existing software, while "thorough" operations such as new software and hardware acquisition are also quite frequent.  It must be underscored that no software conversion activities have been allowed for in 31% of the cases.

    It is interesting to note, in passing, that, with regard to business I.T. system feature, results show that 48.2% of surveyed firms use network systems, 22.8% stand alone personal computers (without network connection) and 21.5% a mainframe system.

    About 81% of the respondents with undergoing conversion projects carried out a detailed assessment of "mission-critical" systems, that is, the most important and most closely tied to production process with regard to market quality, output and delivery requirements.  93% of the respondents completed the assessment, and 80% developed related executive projects (completion rate is 87%).

    As for "non-critical-systems", which are defined as residual and are mainly concerned with business administrative management, accounting, etc., 72% of the firms carried out a detailed analysis, and 77.6% developed executive projects (completion rate is 86%).

    Table 1 - Small and medium enterprise "Year 2000" awareness level as of July 10, 1999,  by business area and employment level. (%)