However, most of RBI's date-sensitive applications have already been made Y2K compliant across the country. "These applications have undergone extensive tests and have also got third-party certification for Y2K compliance," RBI's chief general manager (department of information technology) SR Mittal said. Mittal is supervising the central bank's preparedness for the millennium bug.

"The Bank has already imported Y2K-compliant machines for this purpose, each having state-of-the-art "AS/390" architecture. They are currently undergoing various hardware and software tests in Mumbai before installation and commissioning at othercentres," he added.

Banking sources pointed out that the IBM mainframes at four clearing centres were not supposed to handle any date-sensitive processing. "Only settlement and cheque processing operations are done on these, and these operations are not date-sensitive," they said.

"In fact, all servers handling date-sensitve data have already been made Y2K-compliant across the country, and the rest are being transformed into `dummy terminals' (diskless nodes) which will draw all data and software from the Y2K-compliant servers," Mittal said.

"The first step in Y2K compliance at RBI was to ensure the readiness of all hardware and operating systems," RBI sources said adding, "we have already ensured this compliance by procuring the most advanced hardware and operating systems, which have a manufacturers' guarantee for Year 2000 operations."

Banking sources, however, pointed out that some operational hiccups have yet to be ironed out from these operating systems."The next step was to ensure the Y2Kcompliance of the systems software (like compilers, data-based management software, etc.) and of the application software," another senior RBI official said.

"To this end, we purchased only the standard, vendor-certified products. All the relevant `source codes' have also been procured from the suppliers to ensure testing and rectification at our end, whereafter these products have been been subjected to various Y2K-related tests. Some such tests are still being carried out," the official said. The critical date-sensitive operations of the RBI include its deposit accounts department (where all banks maintain current accounts with the RBI), the public accounts department and the public debt office. The RBI has already ensured smooth compliance for all such departments handling date-sensitive data. sources said.

To ensure a smooth transition for the regulator into the next millennium, the RBI has already completed a large part of the conversion of its historical data into Y2K-compliant data usingspecialised application programmes.

Apart from in-house experts, the central bank has also entered into an agreement with IBM for the purpose of purchase of Y2K-compliant hardware and conversion of historical data."In any case, using the specialised software packages available with RBI, the entire historical data can be made Y2K-compliant within a period of two weeks," the RBI official said.

According to him, the bank is not relying on any stop-gap arrangements (like windowing techniques) for Y2K compliance. Various tests to which the hardware and software installed at the RBI were subjected include 22 `date tests' wherein the data is set to certain critical dates of the next millennium and the applications are run under simulated conditions to detect glitches in the system, RBI sources said. The RBI had earlier warned banks and NBFCs will face stiff penalties if they fail to satisfy it about their state of preparedness for achieving Y2K compliance by March 31, 1999.