Minor Y2K glitches reported as feds return to work

Three days into the new year, the federal government's- and the rest of the world's-computers and their dependent systems continue to operate with hardly any major problems attributable to the year 2000, Bruce McConnell, director of the International Y2K Cooperation Center, said Monday.

"We continue to have no reports of serious disruptions anywhere in the world," McConnell said at a briefing. The center has received "all green" reports from 135 countries, he said, adding that Y2K coordinators from 10 countries indicated during a conference call this morning that they were scaling back their monitoring operations.

With the failure of major problems to materialize even in countries said to be woefully underprepared, McConnell sought to defend the considerable expense and effort undertaken to immunize the United States from glitches, saying the cautious approach had been worthwhile. The federal government spent an estimated $8.5 billion on Y2K fixes.

"I think the resources that we spent were necessary," he said. "I think to take this problem less seriously would have been irresponsible."

But McConnell acknowledged that the nation's infrastructure-such as the power grid, telecommunications and air traffic control systems-was "more resilient" than it was thought to be, with redundancies built in that ended up helping guard against Y2K-related failure.

According to the federal Y2K coordination center, federal agencies reported minor Y2K-related glitches, including:

• As of 2 p.m. on Monday, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was working to fix an information system relating to gun dealer licenses.
• A fire alarm system at the Financial Management Service (FMS) office in Lenexa, Kan., was activated at approximately midnight Jan. 1. A contractor visited the office and fixed the system.
• A lock failed at a Food and Drug Administration leased facility in Kansas.
• The alarm systems at the John F. Kennedy Federal Building in Boston malfunctioned.
• Guam is manually processing federal food stamp benefits because its systems are not Y2K-compliant.
• A Federal Aviation Administration system stopped processing some Notices to Airmen because the software failed to recognize years ending in "0."
• An automatic backup to the central computer complex at the Cleveland Air Route Traffic Control Center failed to activate after the rollover. The FAA fixed the problem in 45 minutes.

"Glitches and hiccups" are expected to continue to arise during the weeks ahead, but because they will be localized and sporadic, "we do not expect them to proliferate or interact to cause any serious harm," McConnell predicted. And he indicated there was little concern that leap year would present a much of a problem.