Senators say Y2K crisis center is moving too slowly

The federal government's plan to assemble emergency response teams to deal with potential year 2000-related computer disasters hasn't come together yet, and time is running out, two members of Congress charged recently.

In a May 5 letter to President Clinton, Sens. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., and Robert Bennett, R-Utah, asked Peter Kind, director of the Y2K Information Coordination Center, what the group was doing to ensure Y2K readiness. But Thompson said the administration's response to his letter raised more questions than it answered.

"The administration waited until the 11th hour to recognize that they had a responsibility to manage this problem," Thompson said. Among the unanswered questions is who will coordinate technology 'SWAT' teams to fix problems, and what framework exists for making decisions on actions to take, he said.

The Y2K Information Coordination Center, created under a presidential executive order, will operate from a downtown Washington location, gathering information on what's happening around the world as the Y2K date rollover occurs. As news pours in from federal agencies, state and local governments and foreign nations, the center will coordinate assistance with help from the telecommunications, energy, banking and airline industries.

But Thompson said that with less than 200 days remaining until Jan. 1, 2000, the ICC has filled only 15 of its 40 staff positions. In addition, the group is still in the nascent phase of collecting information on federal and private sector Y2K readiness, the first step in preparing a national emergency response strategy.

"Congress has provided $7 billion for this effort, and they don't have their final emergency efforts in place. That is unacceptable," Thompson said.

Jack Gribben, spokesman for the President's Council on Y2K Conversion, said the center is in the process of filling staff positions now. "It's not a concern that we'll run out of time. Many of the positions will be filled by detailees [from federal agencies], so it's not as if we're putting ads in the newspaper," he said.

The Y2K center will be in operation full-time from December through January, but will be open for business well before then, Gribben said. Officials of the center hope to have enough data to predict the potential severity of Y2K problems around the world soon. The State Department is collecting information from embassies around the world on international readiness and will put out travel advisories in the early fall. Survey information on air traffic control centers in 185 countries is due July 1, Gribben said.

"Our view is not that the federal government will be prescribing what solutions are best for all of industry," Gribben said. Rather, the Y2K center will work closely with private-sector emergency teams, he said.