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The year 2000 date problem may become the most significant legal problem in history in terms of the numbers of law suits that might be filed. The number of personal law suits aimed at corporate executives for violation of fiduciary duty has at least the potential of affecting the executives and boards of directors of more companies than any other single issue: possibly more than 50 percent of top corporate executives and officers are at some risk. At a lower level, lawsuits for professional malpractice might be aimed at a number of corporate knowledge workers such as risk managers, corporate attorneys, controllers, and auditors may also set new records in terms of the numbers of law suits filed. Discusses the probabilities that the year 2000 damages will be serious enough to trigger personal lawsuits against corporate officers. Current data indicates a 55 percent probability of law suits for executives who fail to take action against the year 2000 problem. However, there is a 5 percent probability of litigation against executives who do take year 2000 action. Overall, taking action to achieve year 2000 compliance is the safest course.

Over the past 50 years computers and software have become indispensable parts of business, commerce, and government. Almost all major corporations now use computers and software as primary tools for accounting, finance, sales support, personnel records, and to a significant degree, manufacturing and distribution. Banks and service organizations use computers and software for virtually all financial transactions. Government agencies use computers for all vital records and for keeping track of data on almost every citizen. The year 2000 software problem would have been invisible if it had occurred in 1950 and only a minor annoyance if it had occurred in 1975 since computers and software were not, at that time, key business tools. But when the problem occurs in 2000 it has at least the potential to damage the economies of every industry and every industrialized nation. Reviews the kinds of damage that might occur from the year 2000 problem and currently understood by software specialists, but not yet widely understood by corporate executives, government officials, and the international press.

Despite the popularity of decentralization, decentralized functions tend to lag in innovation, take longer to complete projects, deliver mediocre quality, sacrifice business synergies, and add little value to clients‘ strategic thinking. Here's why many firms are “recentralizing.”

The year 2000 computer date problem, although identified since the 1960s, has been sensationalized, commercialized, but not yet universally resolved. Although estimates for correcting the problem hover around $600 billion in direct conversion costs, there is also an additional $1 trillion in expected litigation costs. While the technical problem of correcting the two‐digit year field sequence in computer programs to a four‐digit year representation is regarded as trivial and tedious, the more important challenges for today’s managers focus on making the date conversion while maintaining a solid bottom line and dealing with the associated communication and legal issues. This problem has finally been recognized as one with organizational strategic concerns and implications far beyond the domain of the IS department.

Examines the efficiency and effectiveness of a prescriptive systems development methodology in practice. The UK Government’s mandatory structured systems analysis and design method (SSADM) was examined to determine its value to software projects. The evidence was collected from interviews with 17 project managers, discussions with participants on three large SSADM projects and from observing 90 end users in training. The conclusions are that prescriptive information systems methodologies are unlikely to cope well with strategic uncertainty, user communication or staff development. The recommendations are to focus more on soft organisational issues and to use approaches tailored to each project.

The Food Bill has emerged from the Grand Committee on Trade, and will shortly be submitted, as amended, to the House of Commons. Whatever further amendments may be introduced, the Bill, when passed into law, will but afford one more example of the impotence of repressive legislation in regard to the production and distribution of adulterated and inferior products. We do not say that the making of such laws and their enforcement are not of the highest importance in the interests of the community; their administration—feeble and inadequate as it must necessarily be—produces a valuable deterrent effect, and tends to educate public opinion and to improve commercial morality. But we say that by the very nature of those laws their working can result only in the exposure of a small portion of that which is bad without affording any indications as to that which is good, and that it is by the Control System alone that the problem can be solved. This fact has been recognised abroad, and is rapidly being recognised here. The system of Permanent Analytical Control was under discussion at the International Congress of Applied Chemistry, held at Brussels in 1894, and at the International Congress of Hygiene at Budapest in 1895, and the facts and explanations put forward have resulted in the introduction of the system into various countries. The establishment of this system in any country must be regarded as the most practical and effective method of ensuring the supply of good and genuine articles, and affords the only means through which public confidence can be ensured.

In its passage through the Grand Committee the Food Bill is being amended in a number of important particulars, and it is in the highest degree satisfactory that so much interest has been taken in the measure by members on both sides of the House as to lead to full and free discussion. Sir Charles Cameron, Mr. Kearley, Mr. Strachey, and other members have rendered excellent service by the introduction of various amendments; and Sir Charles Cameron is especially to be congratulated upon the success which has attended his efforts to induce the Committee to accept a number of alterations the wisdom of which cannot be doubted. The provision whereby local authorities will be compelled to appoint Public Analysts, and compelled to put the Acts in force in a proper manner, and the requirement that analysts shall furnish proofs of competence of a satisfactory character to the Local Government Board, will, it cannot be doubted, be productive of good results. The fact that the Local Government Board is to be given joint authority with the Board of Agriculture in insuring that the Acts are enforced is also an amendment of considerable importance, while other amendments upon what may perhaps be regarded as secondary points unquestionably trend in the right direction. It is, however, a matter for regret that the Government have not seen their way to introduce a decisive provision with regard to the use of preservatives, or to accept an effective amendment on this point. Under existing circumstances it should be plain that the right course to follow in regard to preservatives is to insist on full and adequate disclosure of their presence and of the amounts in which they are present. It is also a matter for regret that the Government have declined to give effect to the recommendation of the Food Products Committee as to the formation of an independent and representative Court of Reference. It is true that the Board of Agriculture are to make regulations in reference to standards, after consultation with experts or such inquiry as they think fit, and that such inquiries as the Board may make will be in the nature of consultations of some kind with a committee to be appointed by the Board. There is little doubt, however, that such a committee would probably be controlled by the Somerset House Department; and as we have already pointed out, however conscientious the personnel of this Department may be—and its conscientiousness cannot be doubted—it is not desirable in the public interest that any single purely analytical institution should exercise a controlling influence in the administration of the Acts. What is required is a Court of Reference which shall be so constituted as to command the confidence of the traders who are affected by the law as well as of all those who are concerned in its application. Further comment upon the proposed legislation must be reserved until the amended Bill is laid before the House.

The following report was brought up by Dr. P. Brouardel, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, President of the Commission, and was submitted for the approval of the Congress:

The danger attending the use of the insufficiently purified waters derived from the Thames and Lea should, we think, be constantly pressed upon the attention of the Legislature and of the public. We regard it as a duty to endeavour to prevent the continued neglect of the warnings which have been put forward from time to time by those who have made a careful and unbiassed study of the subject, and which have recently been again uttered and emphasised by SIR A. BINNIE, the late Engineer of the London County Council. In the public interest it is greatly to be regretted that the system of analytical control, which was maintained by certain London Borough Councils with regard to the water supplied within the areas under their jurisdiction, has been discontinued. The local checks referred to were of the greatest value to the inhabitants of the districts concerned by affording timely warning when water of dangerous character was being supplied, thus enabling some protective measures to be taken. They also served the useful purposes of keeping public attention fixed upon the matter.

The information which has hitherto appeared in the daily press as to the evidence laid before the Departmental Committee which is inquiring into the use of preservatives and colouring matters can hardly have afforded pleasant reading to the apologists for the drugging of foods. It is plainly the intention of the Committee to make a thorough investigation of the whole subject, and the main conclusions which, in the result, must bo forced upon unbiassed persons by an investigation of this character will be tolerably obvious to those who have given serious attention to the subject. At a later stage of the inquiry we shall publish a full account of the evidence submitted and of the Committee's proceedings. At present we may observe that the facts which have been brought forward fully confirm the statements made from time to time upon these matters in the BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL, and amply justify the attitude which we have adopted on the whole question. Representatives of various trade interests have given evidence which has served to show the extent to which the practices now being inquired into are followed. Strong medical evidence, as to the dangers which must attach to the promiscuous and unacknowledged drugging of the public by more or less ignorant persons, has been given; and some medical evidence of that apologetic order to which the public have of late become accustomed, and which we, at any rate, regard as particularly feeble, has also been put forward. Much more will no doubt be said, but those who have borne the heat and burden of the day in forcing these matters upon the attention of the Legislature and of the public can view with satisfaction the result already attained. Full and free investigation must produce its educational effect ; and whatever legal machinery may be devised to put some kind of check upon these most dangerous forms of adulteration, the demand of the public will be for undrugged food, and for a guarantee of sufficient authority to ensure that the demand is met.