As result of the potential serious impact of the Year 2000 problem on SARS activities, an Executive Committee (EXCO) decision was taken during 1996 to start a corporate project to minimise the risk to SARS caused by this problem. The project is managed by the IT component, but the whole of SARS is involved and reports are submitted to EXCO, MANCO, the National Year 2000 Decision Support Centre (NYDSC) and the Inter-departmental Disaster Management Committee on a routine basis. All operational aspects are included in the scope of the project, but the focus is on the core business systems. The certification of the Y2K Readiness of the systems is one of the last actions to be done before the year 2000 to minimise the risk of disruption to SARS core business systems.
The Customs systems have been developed on various platforms and are currently running on a IBM mainframe, DEC/Alpha and IBM compatible desktop environment. Systems are written in COBOL, Visual Basic and Access. TodayÊs demonstration to the industry entails selected date impacted functions of the Customs Automated Process of Entries (CAPE) , the Small Ports Deferment and Passenger systems. The purpose is to show that date impacted functionality of these systems will function correctly in the year 2000.
ISSUED BY THE ACTING COMMISSIONER FOR THE SOUTH AFRICAN REVENUE SERVICE
PRETORIA