HC Deb 29 November 1996 vol 286 c412W
Mr. Hoon

To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many separate computer programmes his Department operates. [5357] Mr. Burt: There is no universal definition of what constitutes a computer programme.

This Department is at present responsible for 18 major mainframe systems, and more than 1,500 small software systems.

Mr. Hoon

To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many lines of computer code there are in his Department's computer systems. [5348]

Mr. Burt

The Department uses a mixture of in-house developed and proprietary software packages. Information on the number of lines of source code used in the proprietary software packages is known only to the supplier.

The in-house developed software contains millions of lines of code and the cost of counting these would be disproportionate. An analysis of this software is currently being carried out as part of our strategy for dealing with the year 2000 date change. This will identify what software changes are required, and the analysis will be completed by January 1997.