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Horn: Y2K Not A-OK
Federal agencies are falling behind in the race to get their computer systems ready for the year 2000, Rep. Stephen Horn, R-Calif., said Thursday, raising the specter of a "massive electronic breakdown" at the turn of the century.
If agencies fail to speed up their repair programs, Horn said at a Washington press conference Thursday, more than half the agencies won't meet the immovable deadline of Dec. 31, 1999. The agencies that are farthest behind tend to be the larger ones, he said, and they operate 80 percent of the mission-critical federal systems.
Horn chairs the House Government Management, Information and Technology Subcommittee. His criticism was prompted by the year 2000 progress reports agencies file quarterly with the Office of Management and Budget. OMB is scheduled to release a summary of the latest reports next week.
Horn acknowledged that some organizations might pick up the pace of their year 2000 repairs. But at some agencies, such as the Transportation Department, even doubling the current rate of repairs would not get the job done in time, he said.
DOT is not the farthest behind, Horn said. That distinction belongs to the departments of Labor and Energy, which will not finish their repairs until 2019 if they proceed at their current rate. At the other end of the spectrum, the Social Security Administration remains in the best shape, with 80 percent of its software repairs completed.
The congressman released a letter to OMB Director Franklin D. Raines in which he again called for better management of the year 2000 situation. In the letter, he also questioned the quality of agencies' reports, citing discrepancies, omissions and numbers that don't add up. For the first time, he said agencies' non-mission-critical systems also warrant attention.
If the mission-critical systems aren't fixed in time, he said, "the distribution of benefit checks could be disrupted, the air traffic control system could become gridlocked and computerized records could be lost or damaged. At best, we may face a major headache, at worst, and electronic disaster."
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