Y2K czar says feds can't fix state, local problems

The federal government can prod and educate local governments and small businesses to ready themselves for the 2000 date change, but it can't do the work for them, said White House Y2K czar John Koskinen Thursday as he released his penultimate assessment on the country's Y2K readiness.

"It's hard for us to reach out and touch everyone," Koskinen said. "We're worried about those local governments, particularly those who want to wait and see what happens."

The most recent data the White House Council on Year 2000 Conversion has for the nation's counties are from April. Koskinen's group relies on information collected and reported by national associations and industry groups to keep track of non-federal Y2K remediation efforts.

The National Association of Counties is considering doing another survey in the fall, but hasn't made a decision yet. The most recent data from April shows that 74 percent of 500 counties surveyed have Y2K plans, but only 51 percent had completed an assessment of their potential Y2K problems, and only 27 percent had completed testing. Fifty-eight percent of counties still did not have contingency plans when surveyed this spring.

Koskinen said the reason for the council's push for local Y2K meetings has been to get local officials to take a more active role in preparing for the 2000 date change.

"We're beyond awareness, we're beyond remediation, we're beyond surveys," he said.

Koskinen added that the federal government has no authority to force small businesses and governments to fix their systems, and therefore they can't depend entirely on Washington to fix problems that could arise on Jan. 1.

"In this case, emergency preparedness starts at the local level," he said. "We are not going to be able to fly blankets to everyone in the United States."

Overall, financial institutions, electric power, telecommunications, and air travel should weather the date change without major problems, Koskinen said. In addition to small governments and businesses, though, elementary, secondary and higher education systems and local health care facilities still lag in preparedness.

Education Secretary Richard Riley sent a letter to all colleges and universities on Thursday urging them to speed up Y2K preparations, and said he is considering requiring them to participate in data exchange testing with the department. So far only 22 of 5,800 postsecondary institutions in the federal student aid programs have tested their systems with the departments.