During the past year
the Federal government overall has made substantial progress in
addressing the year 2000 problem in Federal systems. While many
agencies have made outstanding progress on both internal systems
and on their work with their program partners, other agencies
must redouble their efforts to ensure that their mission critical
systems will be ready and that their programs with a high impact
on the public will function. We have consistently worked with
you throughAssuring the Year the budget process and in other ways
to ensure that your partner’s systems are also Y2K compliant,
however, we also need to be able to demonstrate the overall readiness
of systems -- and the programs they support -- to the public.
This is a critical
facet of our work. While the public generally understands that
we have made progress in addressing the year 2000 problem based
on our internal measure of systems made compliant, their bottom-line
concern is that the programs they rely on will function properly.
Many Federal programs rely on partners such as other Federal agencies,
State, tribal, and local governments, contractors, banks, and
others. We must take an even stronger leadership role and work
with our partners to assure they have addressed any year 2000
problems that could effect Federal programs, jointly test that
the Federal program will work, and together publicly demonstrate
that it will.
In the attachment,
we have identified a number of high impact Federal programs and
we have assigned a lead agency for each program. For each program
where your agency is the lead, please identify to OMB the partners
integral to program delivery; take a leadership role in convening
those partners; assure yourselves that each partner has an adequate
Y2K plan, and if not, help each partner without one; and develop
a plan to ensure that the program will operate effectively. Such
a plan might include testing data exchanges across partners, developing
complementary business continuity and contingency plans, sharing
key information on readiness with other partners and the public,
and taking other steps that you and your partner feel are necessary
to ensure that your agency’s programs will work.
We realize that you
have been budgeting for the effective operation of these high
impact systems for some time, including Y2K compliance, and have
been providing much necessary assistance to your partners to ensure
that they are fixing their Y2K problems. Nothing in this memorandum
or the process it sets in motion is intended to indicate to any
agency or any partner in a high impact program, that there is
new money available in lieu of the funds they already have to
administer programs effectively – which, by definition, includes
making their systems Y2K compliant.
For each program for
which your agency is listed in the attachment as the lead agency,
I ask that you provide OMB with a schedule and milestones for
the key activities in the plan, a monthly report of progress against
that schedule, and a planned date for an event or events to inform
the public that the program is year 2000 ready. It would be most
helpful if public events could be held prior to September 30,
1999.
Please provide a copy
of the schedules for those programs for which you are the lead
agency to OMB by April 15, 1999. Please also provide the first
monthly status report detailing progress against that schedule
by May 15, and by the 15th of each month thereafter until the
work is complete. Schedules and reports can be sent to:
Office of Management
and Budget
OIRA Docket Library
NEOB 10102
725 17th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20503
Reports may also be
faxed to 202-395-5806. Ms. Pamela Beverly is available to answer
any questions regarding the process of submitting schedules or
reports at 202-395-6880.
Please note that this
effort is not intended to give Federal agencies any additional
responsibilities, nor are Federal agencies expected to fund fixes
of systems other than their own. Rather, this effort should be
one of cooperation and partnership among interested parties, all
of whom share a mutual interest in ensuring that important Federal
programs will function smoothly through the year 2000.
Thank you for your
continuing work on this essential effort. If we all continue to
work together, we can, as the President said, make this problem
the last headache of the 20th century, not the first crisis of
the 21st.
Attachment
cc: Agency Chief Information
Officers
Attachment