The nearly $50 million federal Y2K Information Coordination Center (ICC) is not ready for prime time yet, but federal Y2K czar John Koskinen said he expects everything to be running in time to test the center and be on alert for the 2000 date change by early next month.
Koskinen led a Monday tour of the center, showing off the main information coordination room replete with 98 workstations, nine wall-mounted flat television screens and a glassed in "war room" in which Koskinen and other top federal agency officials will collect, organize and distribute information on how the world's computer systems are faring during the date change.
"The challenge to the federal government is to deal with a volume of information we've never dealt with before," Koskinen said.
The ICC formally will open for business, from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., on Dec. 28, and switch to a 24-hour operation, staffed with workers from federal agencies, on Dec. 30. That shift will run through the New Year's weekend and until the business day begins on Jan. 3. Koskinen said the center would then go back to a reduced schedule, until Feb. 29, in which it will be on alert for the leap year.
A core staff of 30 will work at the ICC, with 200 workers expected to work during its peak hours. The center will then go back to its core staff and phase out by June. It's unclear what will happen to the $49 million center after that.
"It's a question we're taking a look at with a number of agencies," Koskinen said.
Concerns were raised earlier this year that the system could be used to carry out, in part, a Clinton Administration cyberterrorism proposal that would call for the creation of a Federal Intrusion Detection Network to track government computer networks.
Koskinen said the Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office (CIAO), one of the federal agencies working on the cyberterrorism project, has moved into the same building as the ICC to see how the Y2K operation works. Private industries in core operations, such as telecommunications and energy, have agreed to report to their respective regulating agencies the Y2K status of their companies' operations, thus allowing the ICC to track public and private systems for Y2K glitches or breakdowns.
"They're looking at the physical capacity of this center," he said. "The templating of information and the partnerships we've formed will put us in good stead in the future."
A spokesman for the Senate's special Y2K committee said Co-Chairman Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, would have an interest in seeing the ICC continue in its emergency monitoring capacity if it works this December.
"He would be among those in favor of keeping the operation alive for other emergencies if it proves effective for Y2K," said spokesman Don Meyer. "We're generally in favor of seeing it have a life after Y2K."
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