*EPF409 02/03/00
Washington Officials List Lessons From Y2K Experience
(Deputy Secretary of Defense Hamre, Sen. Bennett brief) (730)
By Thomas Eichler
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- The successful U.S. government/private sector collaboration over the past couple of years to deal with the Year 2000 date change problem could serve as a model for meeting technology challenges in the future, according to Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre.

Hamre, briefing February 1 at a Y2K review session at the private Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that preparations for the date turnover proved that partnership between government and the private sector can solve difficult problems.

Hamre said the Defense Department, with its vast array of computer systems worldwide, experienced only one significant Y2K-related problem -- with one reconnaissance satellite and its ground-based information processing equipment. But he said the emergency system that had been set up for handling such failures worked as planned, and backup procedures restored operations in a matter of hours.

Hamre said a major benefit from the Y2K experience in the Defense Department is recognition of the dependence on information technology. The department, he said, became truly serious about fixing the Y2K problem only when top-level management came to realize that this was not just a technical problem but a "war-fighting problem," threatening the U.S. military's ability to carry out its basic function.

Hamre said the Y2K experience also highlighted what will be a major problem for government and other institutions in the 21st century: how an organization whose elements each have their own top-to-bottom structures can deal efficiently with a problem that cuts across all elements.

Senator Bob Bennett, chairman of the Senate Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem, told the group that some of the early fear of widespread Y2K-related disruptions resulted from a miscalculation of the threat from embedded chips. Electronic chips are built into a wide range of modern mechanical equipment, from elevators and fire trucks to medical devices and home appliances. The chips are used so widely that it was impossible to check them all, and some warned that a date change malfunction in even a small fraction of the chips could lead to widespread, and cascading, breakdowns in essential systems.

Bennett said his committee finally came to understand, during the past year of Y2K preparations, that while a certain percentage of chips might malfunction at the time of the date change, such malfunctions probably would not shut down whole systems. After coming to that conclusion, he said, the committee felt confident that the country had time and resources sufficient to deal with the Y2K problem successfully.

Bennett, a Republican, praised John Koskinen, Chair of the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion, saying he did a "superb job" of focusing attention on the problem and promoting action to solve it.

Bennett said multinational firms played a positive role in worldwide efforts to prepare for the date change. These firms showed their ability to effect solutions, he said.

He criticized some media outlets for their treatment of the Y2K issue, describing his own experiences resisting frequent attempts by reporters to draw from him alarmist warnings and critical comments on government Y2K efforts.

"First, no one listened" to calls from his Senate committee for attention to the Y2K problem, he said; later the committee was criticized for not being "apocalyptic" in its warnings. Now that the date transition has passed with relatively few disruptions, those who advocated attention to Y2K are being criticized again, he said, on the charge that they exaggerated the seriousness of the threat.

He defended the State Department's late-1999 warnings to travelers of possible serious Y2K-related disruptions around the world. There was no precedent for this kind of problem, he said, and "all wanted to err on the side of caution."

Bennett said many Y2K related computer system malfunctions could occur in the months to come, because many of the "fixes" were only short-term bridging measures, leaving permanent remediation still to be accomplished. These malfunctions, and the steps taken to deal with them, will occur in a "patchwork fashion," he said, and the number and the cost will never be known, because they will be dispersed randomly across the economy and few will bother to report them.

(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State.)
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