If the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) does not solve the year 2000 problem, its computer systems may be unable to pay military and civilian personnel on time or correctly, a General Accounting Office review warned.
Military contractors may also not get their paychecks on time.
The good news for everyone who depends on DFAS accounting systems is that the agency is taking the year 2000 problem seriously and taking steps to solve it. But GAO warned that as of early summer, DFAS had not planned out all the critical steps necessary to fix the date problem. The agency had also not completed formal risk assessments on its systems and had not made sure that it would be able to test the systems for year 2000 compliance.
DFAS will also have to coordinate with the rest of the Defense Department on year 2000 compliance because other Defense agencies and departments provide financial data to DFAS electronically, GAO said.
The year 2000 problem goes back several decades, when programmers used two-digit entries for years, such as "68." It was assumed that all years began with "19." In the year 2000, older systems will mistake the date unless their programs are modified. The date mix-up could make systems like those operated by DFAS fall into mathematical confusion.
DFAS agrees with GAO's assessment and will address the problems the review outlined, the agency said. Government agencies are using a five-phase approach to the year 2000 problem, moving from awareness to assessment, and then on to the criticial renovation, testing and validation phases. DFAS is moving into the final three phases.
Further complicating DFAS efforts to address the year 2000 issue are problems with the Defense Department's systems inventory, the Defense Integration Support Tools database (DIST). DIST is an inventory of DoD information systems and was intended to help DoD agencies with their year 2000 fixes. The department has found, however, that DIST "is not a reliable and accurate tool for managing DoD's year 2000 effort," GAO said. "We do not believe that DIST will be usable and reliable in time to have a beneficial impact on year 2000 correction efforts."
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