§ Mr. HoonTo ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department how many separate computer programs his Department operates. [5525]
§ Mr. StreeterThere is no universal definition of what constitutes a computer program. A formula or a simple line of executable code could be said to be a program. However, the Department is at present responsible for 16 major software systems.
§ Mr. HoonTo ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department how many lines of computer code there are in his Department's computer systems. [5524]
328W
§ Mr. StreeterThe Department is building an inventory of systems and software likely to still be in use in 2000 as part of its strategy for dealing with the 2000 date change issue, but compilation of the inventory is not yet complete. However, the Department has approximately 3.75 million lines of computer code in its major in-house systems which are currently in use.
The Department also uses a number of proprietary software packages and for these, information on the number of programmes or lines of source code is known only to the supplier.