Computers (Hansard, 27 November 1996)

§ Mr. Hoon
To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many separate computer programmes his Department operates. [5517]

§ Mr. Boswell
There is no universal definition of what constitutes a computer programme. However, my Department is at present responsible for approximately 500 software systems—in core MAFF and its executive agencies—comprising an estimated 30,000 programmes. "Packaged" systems are excluded from these estimates.

§ Mr. Hoon
To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many lines of computer code there are in his Department's computer systems. [5516]

§ Mr. Boswell
It is estimated that there are approximately 20,000,000 lines of code in the Ministry's computer systems. This excludes "packaged" systems purchased from external suppliers where such information is known only to the supplier.
My Department is carrying out an inventory of systems that are likely to still be in use in 2000 as part of our strategy for dealing with the year 2000 date change issue.