[Pages H7273-H7276]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

THE YEAR 2000 PROBLEM: CAN IT BE MANAGED?

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] is recognized
for 30 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. HORN. Mr. Speaker, as many of my colleagues know, we have a major
problem coming up on January 1, the year 2000. It is called the ``Year
2000 Problem'', and it relates to our problems with computers that have
been programmed going back into the sixties, where we had very little
capacity and somebody came up with the bright idea that we could save a
few digits here and there by not putting 19 before the year. If it is
1967, let us just put in '67 and we can do all our subtraction and
addition based on that.
As we near the year and the day of January 1, 2000, we face the
problem of thousands and tens of thousands of computers within the
Federal Government, throughout the private sector, State government and
other parts of society where we will have 00 and the computer will not
know whether it is the year 1900 or the year 2000.
Now, this affects millions of people in terms of Federal
entitlements, in determining age eligibility, and so this is the second
report card that the Subcommittee on Government Management,
Information, and Technology, which I chair, has issued. The other one
was last year. We first began focusing attention on this matter in
April 1996. We urged the administration to focus attention on this
problem.
The big problem that year was to get the administration to make an
estimate as to what it would cost to make the conversions, where lines
of code, some of them placed in computers in the sixties, the
seventies, the eighties, and the nineties have to be brought up on the
screen. That information has to be looked at, by a technician, who
determines: Is this date relevant? If so, should we save it? And if we
are going to save it, we need that date to be in 4-digit years, not 2-
digit years.

{time} 1315

We now have unbelievable capacity in our computers. Many laptops have
a storage capacity now that would take a whole room of computers to
provide such storage in the sixties. So this is a solvable problem. But
there are no easy answers. If there were, somebody would be a
billionaire in solving this problem. So I urge high school students
that might watch this to think about how they can fit into helping us
solve this crisis, because it is a crisis and it involves not only the
Federal systems but State systems, and systems in local governments and
the private sector.
When we held our hearings in April 1996, we had experts in computing
estimate that this was a $600 billion worldwide problem. And since half
the computers are in the United States, it is a $300 billion problem
for the United States in private and public sectors. The Gartner Group
also estimated that the Federal Government had a $30 billion problem. I
thought that was high. But we are not sure. We will know on January 1,
2000.
We asked in the appropriations legislation last year for the
submission by the President of the budget it would take to solve this
year 2000 problem. The budget for fiscal year 1998 that will end
September 30, 1998 and will begin on October 1, 1997, which is just a
few weeks away. We asked the administration to give us a
recommendation. The recommendation was that it was a $2.3 billion
problem to make the various renovations and conversions of existing
computer systems in the executive branch.
I must say I had a hearty laugh when I read that figure. I felt that
was so far out of touch with reality that maybe it was not even worth
considering. So we held a hearing and we had a number of key experts
testify. Obviously, one major user of computers is the Department of
Defense. We had the very able Assistant Secretary for Command, Control,
Communications, and Intelligence General Emmett Paige, Jr., as a
witness. We asked him about the administration figure of $2.3 billion
for the whole executive branch. He smiled and responded that $1 billion
of that $2.3 billion was his recommendation; and that DOD has not even
started to look at the assessment to see what is really there in the
thousands of systems that the Department of Defense has responsibility
to operate.
So we knew that the administration had not quite done its homework.
What we have been pressuring for the last few months is to get a much
more solid figure on which Congress could depend.
I have very high regard for the Director of OMB, the Office of
Management and Budget. Dr. Franklin Raines is a very able person. He
immediately started to get on top of this when he became Director last
fall. He is planning to make it a major issue in his budget reviews as
the Cabinet departments, independent agencies, and smaller commissions
come before the Office of Management and Budget to prepare their
recommendations to the President for fiscal year 1999 that will begin
October 1, 1998.

[[Page H7274]]

Now, with computing, we usually underestimate or overestimate,
depending on whether it is money or work. What my colleagues will see
here in our chart of our original grades made in 1996 compared with the
current grades in 1997. Some went completely backward. Only one
agency--the Social Security Administration--received an A, and that was
an A-minus at that. Three received B's. One received a B-minus. The
rest are in trouble. Almost half the agencies involved, there are 11
D's and F's. Those are failing grades.
Some agencies received worse grades than last year because they made
very little progress in terms of renovation of these programs. Last
year we were putting the stress on: ``Are you planning? Are you
organized? Have you faced up to your resources?'' This year we are
talking about, ``Okay, last year was to get you organized for planning
and looking at the resources. Now, have you gone far enough to renovate
some of your systems and to convert them so there will not be a problem
on January 1 of the year 2000.''
I will take the responsibility for the actual grades, but my decision
was based on an interaction with our fine professional staff in the
subcommittee headed by Russell George, the staff director, and a very
fine team from the General Accounting Office, which is the legislative
branch's financial end program auditors, under Joel Willemssen, the
Director of Information Resources Management. And they concur in my
conclusions on this.
We have asked the General Accounting Office to look into some of
these cases in great depth. And we will continue to do that and depend
on them, just as Congress has since they were established in 1921.
Thousands of Government programs must be changed before the 1st of
January 2000 or they are going to fail in a series of unpredictable
ways. Most of the failures will be very frustrating. Imagine yourself
applying for Social Security or Medicare. There is an age relationship
between your eligibility and receipt of that check.
And so, the Social Security Administration gets the A-minus here.
They had an A last year. They have been working on this problem on
their own initiative since 1989, and I commend them for that. The
reason they received an A-minus this year is they have not looked into
the State portion of their systems on disability and other programs
that involve joint State-Federal action through the Social Security
Administration. Social Security needs to get to work on those and bring
them up to speed as to where they are in terms of year 2000 compliance
in their basic database.
But my colleagues can imagine those entitlement programs, be it a
student loan or a Social Security check or a Medicare check, a lot of
them are date-related. What we have to do is make sure that those
agencies that affect human beings solve the problem. There are millions
of people affected by the Social Security Administration. These people
must not have a failure of Government service on January 1 of 2000.
These are serious problems and not a laughing matter.
Some of the failures will probably be humorous. We had one a few
months ago. A delinquency notice was sent on a contract. It said to the
vendor that it had been 97 years delinquent. It is because they passed
into the 2000 period and instead of giving them a 3-year delinquency,
the computer did not know what to do and did what it did. Computers are
dumb unless human beings program them.
But these are the kinds of things that can happen. And unfortunately,
many of the failures have been disastrous. That is why we are urging
the executive branch to get focused on this, and I think Dr. Raines
knows what I am talking about, we see eye to eye, that we do not waste
a lot of time looking for money up here, that we reprogram money
already in the executive branch.
This is the time of year to reprogram. That unspent money is
reverting to the Cabinet officers. They are not spending it on some of
the authorized programs. They need to put the year 2000 problem as
program No. 1 to solve. They need to take those millions that are left
in almost every department and independent agency and apply them to the
year 2000 program. These agencies must not fall behind schedule.
Some, such as those with especially low grades such as HUD, the
Housing and Urban Development Department, the Department of the
Interior, Department of Labor, all in the C's and getting down here in
the D's and the Fs.
AID is a rather interesting one, the Agency for International
Development. We gave them an A last year. They had the planning. They
had the resources. They had the focus. And they were getting a new
computer system and, by George, they would not have these problems in
the year 2000. Lo and behold, they secured the new computer system and
then they found it was not year 2000 compliant. It was making the same
mistakes. The only difference was it was new. So they have fallen
rather far from A to F.
They used to tell the old story in college that the only difference
between the A student and the F student is that the F student forgot it
before the exam. Well, AID had a little problem here after the exam.
Last year they were A on the exam. Now they are on F until they solve
the problem.
We know that a lot of programs are going to fail, and we know that
Government payments will not be made. And so, our problem is we do not
know which programs will fail until there is further assessment by the
departments and the independent agencies.
Waiting for a disaster is frankly not my style of governance or
management. All Congress can do is to provide oversight. We can goad
and prod those that are legally responsible in the executive branch to
keep moving.
Management should be active, not passive. The President needs to
appoint an individual who will step up to the plate and directly
address the Nation's Year 2000 computer problems, starting with the
executive branch. The American people deserve nothing less.
Last year's agencies could achieve a good grade by having a complete
set of plans. That was last year. This year plans are not enough, as I
have suggested in the other examples. Action is what is required.
On the average, only 20 percent of the fixes have been made and only
14 percent tested to see that the fix actually works. When we held our
hearing after the administration's $2.3 billion budget recommendation
in February. It was clear that too many had not even looked at the
extent of the problem.
I cited the Defense example: $1 billion of the $2.3 billion. It was a
figure out of the air. Now the administration has recommended that the
cost is going to be a little higher now. Now it is $3.8 billion. But
that plan did not make sense either. One gap was the plan to implement
and test for some agencies in the same year, 1999.
Now, anyone who has worked with computer systems, and I have, knows
that what they tell us is usually not what occurs. I will not compare
it to used car salesmen, but there is some of that there. They always
overestimate. The Government needs time to make sure that after the
assessment, after the renovation, that there is an operating
evaluation.
I learned long ago, and I have said this many times, that I do not
want to be the alpha site, or the first site, on a new computer; I want
to be the beta site, or the second site, on a computer system where
someone else has worked out all the bugs and they do not have to be
worked out on my watch or my beat, to use the analogy of the Navy and
the police.
So the administration believed last February it was a $2.3 billion
problem. Our hearing showed that the estimate was not in touch with
reality. They now estimate the cost to $3.8 billion. That figure is
also unrealistic.
Another factor must be considered: Scarce human resources. As we near
January 1, 2000, the cost of human resources to fix the problem will
rise dramatically. It is not simply a matter of do we have enough time
in the year 1999 before we face January 1, 2000. The problem is, the
slower we go now, the faster we will have to be in 1999. Our costs will
also rise.
The simple answer is that it takes human resources to sit in front of
that computer screen, pull up the existing database and deal with it in
a new format or get rid of it if we do not need it. That takes people,
and those people are going to have higher and higher wages as we get
down to crunch day.
The executive branch, the President, cannot issue an executive order
to move January 1, 2000. It is going to happen. What they need to do is
get

[[Page H7275]]

their act together in terms of management. In his last appearance
before our Subcommittee on Government Management, I asked the very able
and distinguished Deputy Director for Management, ``How many people in
the Office of Management and Budget give any attention to management?''
And he said right away, ``Oh, 540.''
Well, that is nonsense. That is the total number of personnel in the
Office of Management and Budget. The fact is that if they have 20
employees focused on strictly management problems, I would be amazed.
But former administrations had that number or so back under President
Truman, President Eisenhower, President Kennedy, President Johnson.
They had a first rate management staff in what was then the Bureau of
the Budget. That staff could advise Cabinet officers how to solve some
of these problems, and that is what we need now.
Our committee will be suggesting down the line that we create an
Office of Management whose Director will report to the President or an
individual the President delegates within the Executive Office of the
President. Right now we have a first rate budget Director who has an
interest in management questions. That is not enough.
We have a $5.3, $5.4 trillion national debt and we have a budget that
for the first time since 1969 will be balanced thanks to the work of
Congress and the agreement of the President. We have a budget that
should zero out in 2002 and some even think it might zero out in 1999.
The Director of OMB has a full load of budget problems. The President
needs an office where a first rate staff can advise on management
problems.

{time} 1330

The year 2000 problem is not a technical problem. It should not be a
money problem. The director is right. Let us reprogram existing money
at the end of the fiscal year. We need senior management direction in
these Cabinet departments to make the decision to free up resources so
that the job will be done.
The year 2000 problem is a crucial problem. It is a management
problem. It needs attention at the highest level of the executive
branch. We wrote the President a few months ago. He is a great
communicator. We urged him to use some of that skill and to make people
aware that this is a serious problem. The citizenry needs to be assured
that the executive branch will do its work in a timely way.
If this problem does not have the attention at the highest level of
the executive branch, many of our fellow citizens will be adversely
affected. The costs are going to be rising, because skilled personnel
to do this will demand more for their services. They will be in demand
by State governments, by corporations, by investment houses, by local
governments, among others.
While the President and the Vice President promise computer marvels
to come in the 21st century, the American taxpayer needs today's
Federal computers fixed before they come crashing down in the near
future, which is actually only 838 days away. The clock is ticking.
Despite it all, I am still hopeful. It is within the power of every
agency listed here to earn an A next year. I grade on an absolute. I do
not grade on the curve. I never have. You either all get A's, or you
all get F's.
Now you can see that we have a real problem here in the executive
branch. Here is where the C's start, which is a D plus. Here is where
the D's start: Commerce, Energy, Justice, National Regulatory
Commission, Office of Personnel Management, Agriculture, National
Aeronautics and Space Administration, Treasury.
Then you get down to the F's. I mentioned the Agency for
International Development, Department of Transportation, Education. As
a former university president and professor, it anguishes me to see
Education down in the F's. We gave them a B last year for their
planning.
I mentioned the Department of Transportation, two very fine
Secretaries in the last few years, Secretary Pena, Secretary Slater.
Interestingly enough and unbeknownst to all Secretaries, the Federal
Highway Administration, within the Department of Transportation, had
discovered this problem the same time that Social Security did, back in
1989. But it apparently never percolated up the communications
management network of the Department of Transportation so it could get
to the desk of the Secretary or the Deputy Secretary or the Under
Secretary, the people who are responsible at the top management level
in the Department. They were working on it, but the executive staff did
not know it. They did not even know it last year. And we found out by
accident that this had happened. I do not know that they have continued
it, but I am told they had one marvelous person that recognized the
problem and started working on it. That is what Social Security did.
They took their own initiative.
Well, we have had the two showings of initiative now. Now what we
need is systematic daily concentration to get the job done. The
President needs to appoint someone that can devote executive efforts
full time. It is not someone in OMB who has a million other things to
do, such as regulatory affairs, for example, or many other assignments.
This issue needs full-time attention until the job is done.
Mr. Speaker, I think we should take this very seriously in all the
relevant authorization committees of the House, the various
appropriation subcommittees. The subcommittee of the gentleman from
Arizona [Mr. Kolbe] has done a fine job in demanding that the
administration produce a realistic budget in this area. As I have
suggested the first administration budget was not realistic. The second
budget is about as dubious. But I an encouraged that Director Raines
will systematically go through the department, agency, and commission
budgets this fall and view how they are handling the year 2000 problem
so he can make recommendations to the President for the budget he will
submit to us in February 1998.
It is a serious problem. It needs focus. It needs people talking
about it. It needs every employer in America, public and private,
asking their top staff the question: Are we 2000-year-compliant? If
they are not compliant, then they need to pitch in and help solve the
problem. These systems will not be able to interact with each other
without being fixed. If they are not fixed, they could pollute those
systems which have been fixed.
So what we have here is a bug, a virus, call it what you will, that
can really create chaos throughout integrated computer systems. Our
Subcommittee on Government Management, the Subcommittee on Technology
of Science, and the Subcommittee on General Government Appropriation
and this House have shown that we are determined to do something about
this problem. We urge the executive branch to do the same.
Mr. Speaker, I include the following material for the Record:

REPORT CARD, YEAR 2000 PROGRESS FOR MISSION CRITICAL SYSTEMS OF FEDERAL
DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES
------------------------------------------------------------------------
2000
Agency 1996 1997 1998 1999 Final
exam
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SSA (Social Security A A-
Administration).
GSA (General Services D B
Administration)\1\.
NSF (National Science C B
Foundation)\1\.
SBA (Small Business A B
Administration).
HHS (Department of Health and D B-
Human Services)\1\.
EPA (Environmental Protection D C
Agency)\1\.
FEMA (Federal Emergency F C
Management Agency)\1\.
HUD (Department of Housing and D C
Urban Development)\1\.
Interior (Department of the D C
Interior)\1\.
Labor (Department of Labor)\1\.. F C
State (Department of State)..... B C
VA (Department of Veterans D C
Affairs)\1\.
DOD (Department of Defense)..... C C-
Commerce (Department of D D
Commerce).
DOE (Department of Energy)\1\... F D
Justice (Department of Justice). D D
NRC (Nuclear Regulatory B D
Commission).
OPM (Office of Personnel A D
Management).
Agriculture (Department of D D-
Agriculture).
NASA (National Aeronautics and D D-
Space Administration).
Treasury (Department of the C D-
Treasury).
AID (Agency for International A F
Development).
DOT (Department of F F
Transportation).
Education (Department of B F
Education).
State Governments (State ? ?
Governments).
Local Governments (Local ? ?
Governments).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Improved from last grading period.

Prepared for Subcommittee Chairman Stephen Horn.
Subcommittee on Government Management, Information, and Technology.
Subcommittee Home Page on the Internet: <a href='http://www.house.gov/reform/
'>http://www.house.gov/reform/
</a> gmithtml, September 15, 1997.

SOCIAL SECURITY: A minus The negative grade resulted from
concerns that certain systems which process State disability
claims may be susceptible to Year 2000 problems.

[[Page H7276]]

GSA: B This is a big improvement from its ``D'' grade last
year. It's based on the percentage of renovation, testing and
implementation completed.
NSF: B Based on renovation and testing completed. An
increase from last year's ``C.''
SBA: B It went from ``A'' to a ``B'' based on its
percentage of renovation, testing and implementation.
HHS: B minus It moved up from a ``D'' based on its
renovation percentage. [GAO has more information in its
summary]
EPA: C It missed the assessment deadline, but moved up from
a ``D'' last year due to the percentage of renovation and
testing completed.
FEMA: C Missed assessment deadline, has shown weakness in
the renovation percentage. It improved from an ``F'' last
year.
HUD: C It is lacking in both renovation and testing
percentages.
INTERIOR: C It improved from a ``D'' based on renovation
reported, however, it has conducted no testing.
LABOR: C It improved from an ``F'' but is lacking in
renovation and testing.
STATE: C Its grade was reduced from a ``B'' due to its poor
renovation and testing percents.
VETERANS: C Improved from its ``D'' grade, the agency has
not completed its assessment.
DEFENSE: C minus DOD has half of the Federal Government's
computer systems, and has not completed the assessment phase.
[GAO summary provides greater detail] Last year ``C.''
COMMERCE: D Failed to complete assessment, poor renovation
and testing percentages. Last year it received the same
grade.
ENERGY: D Failed to complete assessment, poor renovation
and testing percentages. It received an ``F'' last year. [GAO
has more information in its summary]
JUSTICE: D Very poor renovation and testing percentages.
Same grade last year.
NUCLEAR REGULATORY: D It dropped from a ``B'' due to zero
renovation and testing.
OPM: D One of the biggest declines in grades (``A'' last
year) due to poor renovation and no testing.
AGRICULTURE: D minus Failed to complete assessment, poor
renovation and testing percentages.
NASA: D minus Has not completed its assessment and has poor
renovation and testing percentages.
TREASURY: D minus Failed to complete its assessment and has
poor renovation and testing percentages. [See GAO's summary
for additional information]
AID: F The most dramatic drop, (it received an ``A'' last
year) is because the new system they adopted has Year 2000
problems despite statements made last year by AID that the
new system would be Year 2000 complaint.
TRANSPORTATION: F For the second year in a row, it receives
an F. This is due to its failure to complete its assessment,
with no renovation, testing or implementation. [GAO has more
information in its summary]
EDUCATION: F Dropped from a ``B'' due to its failing to
complete its assessment and conducting no renovation,
testing, or implementation.

YEAR 2000 PROGRESS FOR MISSION CRITICAL SYSTEMS OF FEDERAL DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In percent
------------------------------- Any
Assessment completed Yes/No Renovation Testing implementation Grade
completed completed Yes/No
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SSA (Social Security Administration) Yes 78 67 Yes A-
GSA (General Services Yes 35 26 Yes B
Administration).
NSF (National Science Foundation)... Yes 33 25 No B
SBA (Small Business Administration). Yes 35 35 Yes B
HHS (Department of Health and Human Yes 28 10 Yes B-
Services).
EPA (Environmental Protection No 33 28 Yes C
Agency).
FEMA (Federal Emergency Management No 35 35 Yes C
Agency).
HUD (Department of Housing and Urban Yes 9 2 Yes C
Development).
Interior (Department of the Yes 43 0 No C
Interior).
Labor (Department of Labor)......... Yes 15 11 Yes C
State (Department of State)......... Yes 25 0 No C
VA (Department of Veterans Affairs). No 51 28 Yes C
DOD (Department of Defense)......... No 40 34 Yes C-
Commerce (Department of Commerce)... No 15 6 Yes D
DOE (Department of Energy).......... No 10 10 Yes D
Justice (Department of Justice)..... Yes 1 1 No D
NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission). Yes 0 0 No D
OPM (Office of Personnel Management) Yes 3 0 No D
Agriculture (Department of No 8 4 Yes D-
Agriculture).
NASA (National Aeronautics and Space No 8 7 Yes D-
Administration).
Treasury (Department of the No 6 5 Yes D-
Treasury).
AID (Agency for International No N/A N/A N/A F
Development).
DOT (Department of Transportation).. No 0 0 No F
Education (Department of Education). No 0 0 No F
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes: The grades are based on percentages reported by departments and agencies for four categories: Assessment,
Renovation, Testing, and Implementation. The departments and agencies are responsible for the accuracy and
consistency of percentages reported.

____________________