Publication Date: September 20, 1996

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It Is Already 2000 at Bank of Boston

By Sue Mellen

When David Iacino, a senior manager at Bank of Boston, volunteered to sit in on a meeting about the Year 2000 problem a couple of years ago, he had no idea the issue would have such far-reaching implications at the venerable New England financial institution. But after that meeting and other briefing sessions by experts in the field, "we recognized that we had to reorganize around the issue if we were going to avoid an unacceptable risk," he says.

As soon as he and other bank managers understood the potential scope of the problem, they began treating the year-change issue as a business risk rather than just a technology risk, Iacino says. It became clear that failure to act would threaten clients' fiduciary interests, "and that was a risk we weren't willing to take," he says.

So the bank assembled a Millennium Project team, with Iacino as project manager. The 30-member team, which Iacino expects to grow as the year 2000 approaches, is already working full time to make the bank's systems "millennium compliant"—modifying applications so they work as well with four-digit year dates as they do with two. The team is "triaging" the project, concentrating on mission-critical applications first, then moving on to less important functions. The team's work is being bolstered by other staff throughout the system who are blending Millennium Project duties with other responsibilities.

The Millennium Project team's work doesn't end with modifying code. After applications have been reworked, they are sent on to some of the bank's business partners—including branch offices and commercial lenders—for real-world testing. The partner sets up a test scenario, such as setting a transaction in the year 2005 and then computing retroactive rates back into the '90s. If the application works without a hitch it gets a final stamp of approval: it is millennium-certified.

Iacino expects the Millennium Project to cost Bank of Boston "tens of millions of dollars" over the next three-and-one-half years. But he's not complaining about the price tag. "We didn’t even want to consider what might happen if we didn’t initiate the project," he says.

Sue Mellen writes from Tyngsboro, Mass.

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