§ Mr. HoonTo ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many separate computer programs his Department operates. [5353]
§ Sir John WheelerThere 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 my Department is at present responsible for 254 major software systems.
§ Mr. HoonTo ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many lines of computer code there are in his Department's computer systems. [5344]
§ Sir John WheelerMy Department uses a number of proprietary software packages and, for these, information on the number of programs or lines of source code is known only to the supplier.
My Department is carrying out an inventory of that bespoke software which is likely to still be in use in year 2000 as part of our strategy for dealing with the year 2000 date change issue, but compilation of the inventory is not yet complete.