Panels hear warnings on state of Y2K preparedness

Both houses of Congress got sobering news from the Y2K front Wednesday, as the Senate Appropriations Committee and House Science and Government Reform committees heard from witnesses in the thick of the computer conversion struggle.

GAO Comptroller General David Walker told the Senate Appropriations panel that although federal efforts to fix the year 2000 computer problem have progressed, the government is still far from completing its work.

"Progress doesn't win medals," Walker said. "To get the medal you have to finish on time."

According to National Journal's Technology Daily, Walker estimated the federal government will need more money to complete its year 2000 conversion. Between February 1997 and November 1998, federal Y2K costs tripled, hitting $7.2 billion.

Although John Koskinen, chairman of the President's Council on the Year 2000 Conversion, last week assured Appropriations Chairman Stevens that no additional money would be needed to set federal computers on track, Walker indicated otherwise, saying the federal government has given "historically optimistic and incomplete expenditure estimates."

"My fear," Stevens said, "is that we're going to get down to the last few months of the year and the costs of testing will be so extreme we won't have any money left."

Congress appropriated $3.5 billion in emergency funds last year for federal Y2K problems. At the other end of the Capitol, Joel Willemssen, the GAO's director of accounting and information management, told the Science and Government Reform panels that the GAO is concerned about the distribution of federal benefit checks in 2000.

Federal programs such as food stamps and other welfare programs are run by state systems that may not be as prepared, Willemssen said.

When the GAO tested state-run federal welfare programs in August, 84 percent of mission-critical Medicaid systems failed and 76 percent of food stamp systems were unprepared.