Half Of U.S. Counties Not Ready For Y2K Bug
(12/08/98, 4:53 p.m. ET)
By Reuters
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Half of the United States' countieshave no strategic plans to tackle millennium-bug computerproblems that could snarl everything from ambulances to railroad-signal lights to drinking-water supplies, the National Association of Counties said Tuesday.
In the first survey of its size at the local level, the group, which represents the nation's 3,069 counties, said only 50 percent of the 500 counties it surveyed last month are ready for potentially disastrous computer snafus on Jan. 1, 2000.
With only 13 months left before year 2000, "urgency is the name of the game," said Terry Wood, who handles such problems for Montgomery County, Md.
"It is a critical problem that has the potential for disaster," said Betty Lou Ward, president of the group.
The year 2000 problem stems from the early days of computers when memory was a precious commodity. Programmers used only two digits to indicate the year, and this may now cause computers to recognize "2000" as "1900" and crash or give inaccurate data.
Most vulnerable are the thousands of small, rural counties dotting the nation, officials said.
Of the 119 counties surveyed with less than 10,000 people, 74 have no countywide plans to prevent possible chaos.
By contrast, all but one of the 16 counties surveyed with half-a-million or more people said they had countywide plans, the survey found.
"They look at the problem as beyond their ability to solve," Tim Lowenstein, supervisor of Buffalo County, Neb., said of rural counties.
However, "To ignore the problem is to walk barefoot through a Nebraska pasture infested with rattlesnakes," he added, saying the problem is "fixable" by even the tiniest localities.
Asked for worst-case scenarios, officials pictured cities with elevators marooned on 30th floors, traffic grids paralyzed by dark traffic signals, and 911 emergency response systems thrown into chaos.
But officials said many counties are making progress. While some have no strategic plan, 91 percent have hired someone to handle the problem, and officials in 77 percent of those counties have already begun working on the issue.
As for the pricetag, Los Angeles County, the largest in the survey, said it will cost $155 million to fix the problem. By contrast, tiny Ohio County, Ind., with a population of 5,458, said it expected $400,000 in costs.
In other findings, less than half of counties have tackled the stickiest Y2K problem -- searching systems for embedded computer chips that must be checked.
And less than one-third of those surveyed said they plan to test their systems countywide, even though such systems often are linked.
Nearly three-quarters have no stopgap plans if the emergency systems they put in place fail, added the survey, prepared for the group by National Research.
Overall, 23 percent of counties said they will spend the most to fix computers involved in general government administration, while 16 percent said fixing tax and finance systems will be the costliest, the study said.
Eleven percent said modifying emergency response systems will cost the most, while 9 percent cited fixing court-related programs.
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