Agencies miss deadline on Y2K fixes
The federal government misses its self-imposed deadline for completing Year 2000 computer fixes.
The Clinton administration said 11 agencies have not finished updating all of their "mission-critical" computer systems. The White House last year ordered the agencies to meet today's deadline in hopes of staving off last-minute chaos as this year ends.
At a press conference this afternoon in Washington, John Koskinen, chairman of the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion, said 13 of the 24 federal departments did make the deadline. But the Agency for International Development missed it completely, reporting that none of its systems have been fixed, officials said.
In addition, the 8 percent of agencies that missed the White House deadline include components of several vital agencies, such as the Health and Human Services Department, the Defense
Department, and the Federal Aviation
Administration. Services eliciting the most concern are flight controls, Medicare check processing, and weapons systems.
Koskinen also said 25 percent of the White House's own mission-critical systems missed the deadline. He said the White House expects to have its systems 50 percent compliant by June and fully compliant by the end of the summer.
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Koskinen said the rest of the lagging agencies will complete their Y2K work by summer's end. Of 6,123 critical federal systems, only about 500 systems at 11 large agencies still need repairs, he said.
Republican leaders immediately lambasted the Clinton administration for failing to meet the Y2K deadline. "Today the administration is redefining success by patting themselves on the back for being 92 percent Y2K compliant. The reality is, the Administration has failed to meet its own deadline," House majority leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) said in a statement released this afternoon.
"The administration is fooling itself and luring the American public into a false sense of security. The Administration's definition of 'compliant' just isn't good enough," Armey said.
"We view this 92 percent as a major milestone," Koskinen said. "Yet there is still work to be done."
To make sure the job gets done, the administration will ask for monthly updates on the status of lagging Y2K programs and systems.
"We will also ask agencies to submit contingency plans by June 30," said Office of Management and Budget deputy director Edward DeSeve, who joined Koskinen at the press conference. "We'll ask them what is the risk of Y2K failure and how likely is this risk to happen."
The White House's John Koskinen on the crisis.(CNET TV video)  1.5M |
"The remaining 10 percent are a concern because they include critical systems and services which play an important part of maintaining the health and well-being of our nation's citizens," the senators said in a joint statement issued yesterday.
Other agencies eliciting concern, besides the Defense Department, which has made headway but is still not 100 percent ready, are the Energy Department, and the State Department, according to the senators.
Some of the critical government computers that will not be ready by
March 31 include mission planning systems for F-117A Stealth and F-15E
fighters.
U.S. Ballistic Missile Early Warning System command and control
networks also will miss the deadline, although they should be
operational later this year, according to Bennett.
The many computers vulnerable to the so-called millennium bug are programmed to register only the last two digits of the year, meaning that "2000" may be read as "1900," generating errors and scrambling computers.
If the agencies do not bring their systems into compliance, some experts warn, Americans could feel the consequences in paralyzed air travel, electric power failures, nuclear plant shutdowns, undelivered pension checks, and unpaid government employee payrolls.
Five agencies--the Environmental
Protection Agency, the Social Security
Administration,
the Small Business
Administration, the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, and the National Science
Foundation--report that their mission-critical systems are now 100
percent compliant.
Dodd and Bennett said their committee will hold a hearing next month to further examine the details of the government's progress. Invited witnesses include Koskinen, chairman of the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion, and Jacob Lew, director of the Office of Management and Budget.
A key aspect of the hearing will be the extent of the government's "end-to-end" testing of interdependent computer systems. End-to-end testing is considered one of the most important steps in the verification process.
"Just because a system or unit is Y2K-compliant on its own does not guarantee it will be free of Y2K problems when run with other systems," Dodd and Bennett wrote in their joint statement. "It's like testing a parachute without pulling the ripcord."
The Senate committee will also look at agency contingency plans, which Dodd and Bennett have increasingly focused upon as January 1 approaches.
As reported earlier, other members of Congress joined the two senators in asking 22 agency heads to submit contingency plans for dealing with possible Y2K-related failures.
To date, the federal government estimates it will spend as much as $6.8 billion fixing the Y2K computer problem, a figure that is expected to increase significantly before 2000 arrives.