Consulting » INTRODUCTION.

INTRODUCTION.

Time has no meaning if there is no change. Indeed, time is measured by change.

One second is defined as the amount of time it takes for 9,192,631,770 oscillations of the microwave radiation from caesium-133 atoms. How we measure time is, of course, a simple fluke of history. All our hopes and fears for the new millennium would be misplaced today if our numbering system were not based on the number 10. And a simple link between time and space can be made by considering the Greenwich meridian – which will be the focus of so much celebration on 1 January 2000. Which raises the question: isn’t this publication a year early? (We will dismiss the pedants who say that it is two years early.) No, because we are concerned here not just with a single date – abbreviated to the inaccurate shorthand “Y2K” – but with the whole transition between 20th century practice and 21st century ideas. That’s why this issue looks at current budgeting practice – that most forward-planning, backwards-looking, time-consuming, resource-swallowing process – the onward march of regulation, the problems of using the euro (a currency with no history), the prospects for IT budgets once we all survive – or are killed off by – the millennium bug, and so on. Time is money. Better start reading now.

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