Metro Systems and Technology Director Mike Saunders is still assessing the Y2K problem. (By Frank Johnston – The Washington Post)

The city's protracted financial crisis has meant years of delay in replacing antiquated computers. In general, the older the equipment, the more likely it is to have Year 2000 flaws.

For example, the computer program that keeps track of payroll and personnel for Washington's 47,000 employees was first installed in 1972, relying on 1960s technology. The equipment is so old that replacement parts are no longer manufactured and technicians must cannibalize parts from other equally antiquated machines. District officials compounded the problem by delaying a full-scale program to detect and repair Y2K flaws. The city's Year 2000 effort was "frozen in place" because of slow decision-making, delays in the processing of payments to consultants and confusion over who was in charge, the D.C. inspector general noted recently.

"Bottom line: The District faces a great risk that its systems will not be ready on time," concluded a report by the U.S. General Accounting Office in June.

Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House panel that oversees the District, sent a letter in mid-June to Andrew F. Brimmer, chairman of the D.C. financial control board, declaring the city to be "at the crisis stage" and demanding "immediate, definitive and dramatic action."

The District's current plan involves replacing almost every major computer system in the next 17 months, while simultaneously repairing older systems in case the replacement computers are not ready in time.

Among the computers being supplanted – at an estimated cost of $200 million – are those handling city budgeting and bill payment; personnel and payroll; real estate and income tax collection; business and land-use permits; driver's license and motor vehicle registration; pension payments; purchasing; student information; and police and fire communications, including dispatch services.

Last month, the District hired International Business Machines Corp. to find and repair flaws in up to 30 million lines of software code. Complicating the task is enduring uncertainty over whether the District has saved copies of the original "source code" – a recipe of sorts used to create the instructions that run various computer systems, said Neal Tobias, the IBM official in charge of the District project.

Given the age of the District's systems, even if the source code is found, it's likely that it was written in several computer languages, further complicating repairs. Such has been the case with the District's pension system computer code, written in five languages. IBM computer engineer Doug Rose recently flew to Charlotte – code in hand – where he and five others expect to spend at least six weeks reviewing and fixing 650,000 lines of code.

"Every time you do one of these, you run into something different," Tobias said, "some strange anomaly in a program that makes it more complicated."

IBM's bill so far has amounted to about $1 million a month and that is likely to double soon as work intensifies, Peck said. There are no estimates of a final price tag because IBM doesn't expect to finish assessing the magnitude of the job until September. The city's late start and the emergency status of IBM's work will add a surcharge of about 15 percent, Peck said.

"Bad news for the District," she added. "It is going to cost more."

Renovating dozens of antiquated computer systems while simultaneously designing and building new ones is a complicated, risky process, District officials acknowledge.

Consider the city's six-year-old effort to replace its payroll and personnel system. More than $10.2 million has been spent on a new system that Judy Banks, director of the Office of Pay and Retirement Service, said was supposed to be on line at least a year and a half ago. According to the latest schedule, the new computer system won't start processing payroll checks until January. Even then it won't be ready to handle pension payments, as originally planned, since only the first phase of the project is nearing completion.

"The District is a city, a state, a county, and it even has certain federal responsibilities," said Aaron R. Andrews, the fourth manager to oversee the Comprehensive Automated Personnel and Payroll System project in the past three years. "That level of complexity means that whatever you purchase, you need to tailor it to the constantly changing requirements of the city. And that takes time."

But the Dec. 31, 1999, deadline for fixing the Year 2000 bug can't be pushed off.

The District's new computer system for handling driver's licenses and motor vehicle registrations isn't scheduled to go on line until Oct. 1, 1999. But District officials have yet to select the computer program to run the system and are still studying systems operated in other states, Peck said.

Despite the work remaining, officials voice confidence that there will not be major breakdowns in city services come Jan. 1, 2000.

"Time does present you with some risks," Peck said. "It will take a very strong District team and very strong IBM team working with very focused agency teams to make it happen. Those things we have set in place."

Grimke Technology Center's Thomas P. Hoey works with the Corrections Department to fix the bug. (By Juana Aria – The Washington Post)

Early Start

Virginia started in earnest in May 1996, and by the end of the year, then-Gov. George Allen (R) had assigned various state officials to oversee the effort.

Maryland completed a preliminary assessment of its 15 largest agencies in February 1997, detailing problems, prescribing fixes, estimating costs and assigning responsibility.

Despite such planning – and despite millions of dollars spent for help from assorted Year 2000 consultants – a sense of urgency remains in Annapolis and Richmond, a realization that repairs are a more time-consuming task than anticipated.

"It is like knowing there is highly contagious disease out there but you can't tell who has it or what the cause is," said Bette H. Dillehay, director of the Virginia Century Date Change Initiative Project Office. "It is an overwhelming, frustrating and never-ending search."

Virginia's Department of Corrections, for example, which houses 29,800 inmates and tracks 36,800 probationers and parolees, has decided it must repair almost every major computer system the department operates. The flawed software includes programs that track inmates' sentences, behavior, pay that they're entitled for cleaning bathrooms or making license plates, visitors and grievances filed against guards, as well as inmate money put in state trusts, said Ed Morris, Department of Corrections deputy director.

That is not all. The computer system that monitors parolees needs fixing, and the department remains unsure so far of how many of its 500 to 600 personal computers need repairs. The department also is trying to determine if the prison door-locking systems, motion-detection devices, alarms and other security equipment with "embedded" computer chips will function properly. Dillehay noted that the state has been assured that even if the locking systems malfunction, they will go automatically to a locked position.

Although the department has been aware of the Year 2000 problem for several years, only recently did officials realize how insidious the bug can be. Corrections plans to spend $6 million on fixes, including the cost of a consulting firm with 18 employees assigned to the task. Most work is scheduled for January completion, but the department remains on the state government's list of "high-risk" agencies.

"It was like worrying about getting hit by an asteroid," Morris said. "You don't think it is coming until you see it coming and you think even then it is going to miss you."

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