Federal agencies are deciding which computer systems they can't live without and which systems can be sacrificed, under orders from the White House.
In a Jan. 20 memorandum to department heads, Office of Management and Budget Director Franklin Raines directed agencies to prepare a contingency plan for every system that will not be fixed by the federal government's March 1999 deadline for year 2000 conversion. The memo steps up administration pressure on agencies as the detonation date for the so-called millennium bug nears.
"Recognizing that not all systems may achieve the March 1999 target, we expect agencies to make explicit triage decisions as they prioritize their work," Raines wrote.
As agencies pick which systems to save, they must also make sure that the states, private businesses and other organizations with whom they exchange data are also preparing for the turn of the century. Even if a federal department is ready for Jan. 1, 2000, its operations may malfunction if other systems that are connected to federal computers fail.
Raines said agencies had until Feb. 1--two weeks from the date of the memorandum--to make a complete inventory of all outside organizations with whom their systems interact. Then, agencies have until March 1 to work out a conversion plan with their partners. That will leave one year until the federal deadline for all sides to get their systems ready. Raines said he recognized that the deadline will not be easy to meet.
"Agencies must have contingency plans for those systems that are not expected to have completed implementation by March 1999," Raines wrote. "There is no viable alternative."
Last fall, OMB moved up the year 2000 conversion deadline from November 1999 to March 1999 to leave time for agencies to catch problems they miss during the re-coding process. OMB and the agencies are required to report quarterly to Congress on the government's progress toward fixing the archaic coding snafu, which would cause some computer programs to malfunction or fail at the turn of the century.
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