Introduction

Abstract

‘The computer has been a blessing’, wrote Senator Pat Moynihan in a July 1996 letter to President Clinton, ‘if we don’t act quickly, however, it could become the curse of the age’ (Moynihan, 1996). Moynihan, the senior Senator from New York and respected academic in his own right, was commenting on the results of a Congressional study into a date-generated computer bug that became known as Y2K (Year 2000). President Clinton would eventually describe it as ‘one of the most complex management challenges in history’ (1998). Margaret Beckett, Chair of the British Cabinet Committee on Y2K, would refer to the UK government’s response to it as ‘the largest co-ordinated project since the Second World War’ (Hansard, 1999).

Things did not go right by accident

—Y2K Press Release from the Cabinet Office (Beckett, 2000a)