The Year 2000 Czar

Amid congressional claims that the nation's air traffic control system is likely to fail at the turn of the century, the White House Wednesday appointed a year 2000 czar who will lead a national effort to keep the country's computer systems running after Dec. 31, 1999.

President Clinton has appointed John Koskinen, former deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, to be assistant to the President on year 2000 conversion. Koskinen, who left OMB in July, will be charged with overseeing the federal government's efforts to fix its computer systems before an archaic coding problem causes agency systems to malfunction or fail on Jan. 1, 2000.

Koskinen will also spend about half his time working with groups outside the federal government--those who run systems for states, local governments and private sector organizations. That is a policy change for the administration, which had been focusing its efforts on fixing federal computer systems.

"One function of my job is to make this a national effort," Koskinen told GovExec.com. He said organizations that trade data with federal agencies must get their systems ready for the century switch, otherwise much of the re-coding agencies are doing won't matter. "You can get your own systems working, but if others don't, there's a chance your systems will still malfunction," he said.

Koskinen will head up an interagency President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion. National Economic Council deputy director Sally Katzen will be vice chairwoman of the council. Katzen recently left her post as director of OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, where she oversaw federal agencies' year 2000 conversion plans, to join the NEC. Her presence on the year 2000 council will provide continuity for federal efforts, Koskinen said.

President Clinton's executive order establishing the year 2000 council came on the same day that Rep. Stephen Horn, R-Calif., a leading critic of the administration's Y2K efforts, held a hearing on the impact of the year 2000 problem on the air traffic control system. The Federal Aviation Administration is not doing enough to ensure that the system will operate safely at the turn of the century, witnesses told a joint hearing of the Horn's Government Reform and Oversight Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology and the House Science Subcommittee on Technology, chaired by Rep. Constance Morella, R-Md.

"FAA's progress in making its systems ready for the year 2000 has been too slow," said the General Accounting Office's Joel C. Willemssen. "At its current pace, it will not make it in time."

Stanley Graham, an IT management consultant at Tech-Beamers Inc. of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., testified that FAA cannot afford to continue at its current pace if the agency expects to fix the 65 million lines of code in its computer systems on time.

"Even if the FAA stops slipping their schedule, they would miss their deadline by more than seven months," Graham said. "If they continue to slip at the same rate, they would finish almost nine and a half years late."

Koskinen said his goal is to make sure all mission-critical federal systems, including the air traffic control system, operate fully in the year 2000. But he cautioned that agencies must set priorities to determine which systems to focus on and which fixes can be delayed.

"There is a statistical probability that not all agencies' systems will be effectively fixed," Koskinen said, adding that some agencies' back-end systems are not as important to fix as other systems.

Koskinen was traveling with his wife in Amsterdam when OMB Director Franklin Raines tracked him down to tap him for the year 2000 position. After Vice President Al Gore and President Clinton talked to him, it was hard to say no, Koskinen says. He will begin working at the White House on March 9.