Federal agencies have spent billions warding off potential Y2K disasters and, with only four days remaining, are ready to face the music, public officials say.
At last count, 99.9 percent of the government's mission critical systems are ready for potential Y2K related problems, the Office of Management and Budget has reported. OMB estimates that the Y2K bug will end up costing the government more than $8 billion over a four-year period.
Of the government's 6,100 mission-critical systems, only eight are still not compliant-six in the Defense Department and two in the Justice Department. Of those eight systems, four are being replaced, three are being repaired, and one is being retired. Fixes to the systems are scheduled to be finished in the next few days, before the date rollover.
Several federal agencies have been in the spotlight because they offer services that impact millions of citizens. At the Department of Labor, all systems that support unemployment insurance are Y2K ready, and the Agriculture Department's child nutrition programs have been compliant since December 15.
Meanwhile, "the planes are not going to fall out of the sky," Federal Aviation Administration chief Jane Garvey said in an interview with GovExec.com. Garvey will be on a plane to California during the Y2K changeover. "We simply wouldn't let planes take off if we thought there were safety issues," she said.
At the Pentagon, nuclear weapons systems are 100 percent compliant. Defense Department officials will sit side by side with Russian counterparts in Colorado to monitor the U.S. early warning system against missile attacks.
And the federal Y2K Council, the group set up to monitor and coordinate the governmentwide Y2K effort, is ready too. Beginning today, the council's Web site, www.y2k.gov, will begin releasing information from its Information Coordination Center, including press releases, transcripts of press briefings, and bulletins on the status of systems in major industry sectors, such as power and transportation.
John Koskinen, the government's Y2K czar, is confident in the hard work that federal agencies have put in to defeat the Y2K bug, but warns that problems will not end on Jan. 2.
"Y2K challenges can happen any time a computer that is not Y2K-compliant comes into contact with a Year 2000 date-before or after January 1," Koskinen said at a recent press briefing.
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