U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

63–439 CC WASHINGTON : 2000

THE STATUS OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA’S

YEAR 2000 CONVERSION COMPLIANCE AND

TECHNOLOGY IMPROVEMENT PLAN

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

SEPTEMBER 24, 1999

Serial No. 106–101

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

DAVID M. MCINTOSH, Indiana

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

MARSHALL ‘‘MARK’’ SANFORD, South

Carolina

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas

LEE TERRY, Nebraska

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois

GREG WALDEN, Oregon

DOUG OSE, California

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin

HELEN CHENOWETH, Idaho

DAVID VITTER, Louisiana

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

ROBERT E. WISE, JR., West Virginia

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

HAROLD E. FORD, JR., Tennessee

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

KEVIN BINGER, Staff Director

DANIEL R. MOLL, Deputy Staff Director

DAVID A. KASS, Deputy Counsel and Parliamentarian

CARLA J. MARTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

EX OFFICIO

DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

HOWIE DENIS, Staff Director

ANNE BARNES, Professional Staff Member

BOB DIX, Professional Staff Member

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Professional Staff Member

JENNY MAYER, Clerk

JON BOUKER, Minority Counsel

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on September 24, 1999 ..................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Williams, Anthony, Mayor, District of Columbia; Constance Newman,

vice chairman, District of Columbia Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority; Kathleen Patterson, councilmember,

ward 3, District of Columbia City Council; Suzanne Peck, chief technology officer, District of Columbia; Jack Brock, Director, Information

Management Issues, Accounting and Information Management Division, U.S. General Accounting Office; and Gloria Jarmon, Director,

Health, Education and Human Services Accounting and Financial Management Issues, Accounting and Information Management Division,

U.S. General Accounting Office ................................................................... 12

Letters, statements, et cetera, submitted for the record by:

Brock, Jack, Director, Information Management Issues, Accounting and

Information Management Division, U.S. General Accounting Office,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 52

Davis, Hon. Thomas M., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Virginia, prepared statement of .............................................................. 3

Jarmon, Gloria, Director, Health, Education and Human Services Accounting and Financial Management Issues, Accounting and Information Management Division, U.S. General Accounting Office, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 70

Newman, Constance, vice chairman, District of Columbia Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 33

Norton, Hon. Eleanor Holmes, a Representative in Congress from the

District of Columbia, prepared statement of .............................................. 8

Patterson, Kathleen, councilmember, ward 3, District of Columbia City

Council, prepared statement of .................................................................... 23

Peck, Suzanne, chief technology officer, District of Columbia, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 37

Williams, Anthony, Mayor, District of Columbia:

DC Millennium Celebration Executive Summary .................................. 89

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 16

(1)

THE STATUS OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA’S YEAR 2000 CONVERSION COMPLIANCE

AND TECHNOLOGY IMPROVEMENT PLAN

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1999

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 11 a.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Thomas M. Davis

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Davis, Morella, Horn, and Norton.

Staff present: Howie Denis, staff director/counsel; Anne Barnes,

Bob Dix, and Melissa Wojciak, professional staff members; David

Marin, communications director; Jenny Mayer, clerk; Jean Gosa,

minority clerk; and Jon Bouker, minority counsel.

Mr. DAVIS. Good morning and welcome.

The meeting will come to order. The hearing is taking place at

a very critical time for the District of Columbia. Our bipartisan legislation to expand higher educational opportunity is poised for passage in the Senate next week. I look forward to very prompt House

concurrence in the transmittal to the White House.

The D.C. budget containing the funds for this I understand is

going to be vetoed and sent back here, and that’s going to be a

struggle to keep those dollars in quite candidly. But we will do everything that we can because it’s a great program.

I think the difficulty with the subject of today’s hearing is, is the

city able to manage the money correctly that is sent from the Federal Government, and this just adds another wrinkle into how Congress will react to money coming back here under a veto at a time

when budgets are very, very tight. My assurance that I will do everything I can to keep those dollars here for the city as we try to

work through this difficulty.

But I have to be candid, there are a lot of competing consistencies up here for those dollars. And so let’s try to work together

and do the best we can. A lot of progress has been made. Private

sector investment decisions now include the District as a viable regional partner. Wall Street has acknowledged this improvement.

Population enhancement and stability remain one of our top goals.

So far as Y2K is concerned, it’s my understanding that there is a

supplemental budget request pending with the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

2

Assuming the pending budget itself becomes law, eventually, this

would provide additional Federal funds to address the city’s Y2K

mitigation effort. For all of these reasons and more, I again would

hope that we can find a way to let this budget go into effect. Otherwise, losing dollars in one area means we have to cut and paste,

and it’s just not a good thing for the city or the region.

The District’s Y2K compliance program is mixed. The team

which has been assembled is doing a good job under very difficult

circumstances, but the mitigation project started late, and it’s been

forced to play catchup. Consequently, the risk and the cost is higher than usual. Effective contingency planning is essential to minimize the potential for serious service interruptions.

While most of the District’s leadership has proclaimed its Y2K

commitment as a high priority, the evidence suggests that not everybody has followed through. I am concerned and troubled by the

GAO report that documents serious problems. Especially troubling

is the fact that a contract with the prime Y2K consultant was recently allowed to lapse. So we’re going to try to find answers to

those today.

Also troubling is a report from the District’s Inspector General

identifying major concerns. These include funding, training, and

agency compliance problems, along with poor communication, cooperation and coordination.

I certainly acknowledge that progress though has been achieved,

and we can’t lose sight of that fact. I don’t want to minimize the

accomplishments that have been made to date, but we can’t afford

to lose our focus and tenacity as time’s swift chariot draws near.

Now is the time to reaffirm our commitment to achieving a favorable outcome.

And today we will try to hone in on those issues and as we have

on so many tough issues facing the city try to work together to

work on appropriate solutions. We expect that the lights will stay

on after midnight on New Year’s Eve, and other municipal services

will continue without interruption.

In that regard, I want to note that a New Year’s Eve millennium

celebration of some sort is being planned for the District at the urging of the White House and others. We want to look forward to

learning how this event could impact the ability of various local

agencies to respond to potential Y2K problems.

My thanks as always to my ranking member of this subcommittee, Eleanor Holmes Norton, for her continuing leadership and

guidance through this. The city has been, I think, blessed with her

leadership through some very difficult times over the last 5 years.

I also want to thank the vice chairman of the subcommittee Connie

Morella and, of course, Steve Horn, who has shown national leadership on the Y2K compliance matters.

I look forward to hearing from our distinguished panel. And I

now yield to my friend the delegate from the District of Columbia,

Ms. Norton for her opening statement.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Thomas M. Davis follows:]

3

4

5

Ms. NORTON. I want to thank Chairman Davis for his consistent

attention to Y2K in the District. I also want to thank District officials for a phenomenally improved job of meeting the unprecedented Y2K challenge they have faced.

This week the Washington Post reported what amounted to a Cplus, maybe even a B-minus for D.C. Y2K readiness compared of

course to higher marks for Virginia and Maryland. The difference

is that the District did not even report to class until late, a problem

of the District’s own making to be sure, and had a lot of makeup

work to do.

Mayor Anthony Williams’ interim City Administrator Norman

Dong and Chief Technology Officer Suzanne Peck and her staff had

no responsibility for the late start, but they have moved forward

without excuses to achieve what appears to be a photo finish that

should avoid a crisis.

Thanks also are due to the Clinton administration, beginning

with the President, who included the District in the Federal Government’s Y2K budget. The administration agreed that it was in

the interest of the Federal Government to give this assistance to

the District as the seat of government and work with me to have

D.C. receive Federal Y2K funding. Without quickly funding the

District’s startup effort, a Y2K catastrophe in the city seemed inevitable only a few hearings ago. Not only did the District receive an

initial grant of $61.8 million in fiscal year 1999, the city got another $20 million in extra funds from the District appropriation

when it was negotiated by the White House as a part of the omnibus appropriation bill for fiscal year 1999.

This morning embargoed GAO testimony was leaked to shift the

emphasis from the District’s extraordinary success in making up

for lost time in a way no one predicted at our last hearing. According to the GAO, the District has not been able to track and account

for all the money allocated thus far. However, OMB and the District have been consistently working on this problem, despite the

concern that personnel necessary for the Y2K effort not be drawn

into important but not nearly as critical auditing matters.

OMB assured me several months ago that there was no evidence

that money was being misspent. The District took the sensible step

of commissioning an outside audit to resolve financial tracking

issues rather than side tracking its critical high-level Y2K personnel into financial tracking duties.

We are grateful not only for the original Y2K grants and the

extra funds included in the Y2K 1999 appropriation by the President, but also for the active participation of the Office of Management and Budget in assisting the District. Expert assistance has

come from the top of the President’s Council on Year 2000 Conversion, including frequent meetings and advice and counsel involving

John Koskinen, chair of the President’s Council on Y2K Conversion, Diedre Lee, administrator of Federal Procurement Policy, and

OMB and Sally Katzen, counselor to the Director of OMB.

The important news for today’s hearing surely is that the District

has done far better at achieving Y2K compliance than most anticipated. It was always clear that the matter would go down to the

wire and that as in other cities, emphasis had to be placed on contingency planning. Among the most important tasks that remain is

6

to avoid contributing to the problem by public actions and statements that distract from the success that is clear and that can

panic the public.

Rather the example to be followed was set by Federal Reserve

Chairman Alan Greenspan a few days ago, who warned against actions such as withdrawal of funds from banks or ATMs and other

actions that create problems that will be of our own making.

In the District, Members of Congress, local officials, business

people and civic and community leaders have an obligation to

speak responsibly about Y2K, pressing local officials hard to attend

to the task that remain is part and parcel of assuring accountability.

Actions and talk that do not take account of progress made and

precautions taken could lead to a rush to banking institutions, food

stores, gas stations and other hoarding that could promote scarcity,

inflate pricing artificially and cause disruption needlessly. The District is doing its part very well against all the odds, and the city

deserves as much praise from us today as it has gotten criticism

in the past.

I look forward to testimony from today’s witnesses who have the

responsibility, have accepted it and are closest to the facts we need

to hear.

Mr. Chairman, if I may, I understand that you spoke of the

pending appropriation before I came to this hearing. I believe it is

irresponsible to engage in threats concerning the D.C. appropriation. And I want to say to all within the call of my voice that the

only way for the District of Columbia to lose any money in the appropriation is for the President of the United States to give it up.

Throughout the appropriation process, when the Democrats in

the House and the Democrats in the Senate felt they had to vote

against our appropriation because of the way money was manipulated, because of the way the District appropriation was—the instate tuition was being treated and because of the attachments.

Throughout that time, I have been every step of the way in touch

with the highest levels of the White House who every step of the

way have assured me that the District’s appropriation was not in

danger. If it is in danger, it will be because the Republican majority chooses to fight to punish the District for standing up for its

rights when it handed the Congress a balanced budget with a surplus and the tax cuts.

Now, we would like to read a statement from the spokesman for

Jack Lew, the highest official at OMB: Funding levels are really

not in dispute here. The issue at hand is resolving the problem presented by a wide array of riders that would keep the District from

running its business freely in a way that is consistent with home

rule.

On the specific issue of funding, Congressman Davis’ own record

shows that he is a strong advocate and ally in keeping the District

meeting its funding needs. By the same token, our commitment on

7

funding is unwavering. There is no reason that a possible CR

should lead to a situation that would deprive the District of funding.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Eleanor Holmes Norton follows:]

8

9

10

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Ms. NORTON. And I commented on this,

not just before you came in, but over the last few weeks, and not

in any threatening manner. I think anybody who heard my comment made it clear that sometimes you have to let people know

where your judgment leads you in conversations. Unfortunately,

I’m not the appropriator or I could assure you that every dollar

would come back to the city. As I said before, we’re going to fight

for it.

But as you know we had a struggle with many of the appropriators to get the money that we got earlier this year in this legislation. Other budgets are tight, education is tight, environmental legislation, NASA, all of these budgets are being cut and slashed.

And my fear, and I think it’s an important sometimes for elected

officials to share concerns, not in a threatening manner, but in a

very realistic legislative way to say that these dollars are going to

be quickly reclaimed by other committees.

I will continue to do everything I can to protect those dollars for

the District of Columbia. But I think it will be naive of me to sit

up here and smile and just try to cover myself that somehow this

did not take place. The two riders that are on the bill this year that

were not on the bill the President signed last year call for forbidding the legalization of marijuana and the cell towers in Rock

Creek Park, which were put on by the Democratic leader in the

U.S. Senate. These are the items.

I did not support all of these riders, and in fact I spoke against

some of them on the floor. And I would like to see some of them

go off. But you have to understand there is a process where we get

a lot of people into the mix sometimes who don’t always agree with

us, and we have to give our best judgment in trying to get the best

results for this city in the region.

I now recognize Vice Chairman Mrs. Morella.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, if I may, I believe

if you would put this matter into play at this hearing, as the representative of the District I should at least be able to respond to

the comments you made.

Mr. DAVIS. You responded earlier.

Ms. NORTON. You’re the one that put this into play, Mr. Chairman. And it is your comments that are seeking to intimidate the

District and I intend to use my time in order to respond to those

comments.

Mr. DAVIS. Mrs. Morella.

Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, back to the subject of

Y2K. And I appreciate the timing of your holding this important

hearing. I think we’ve got 98 days after today when we will be celebrating January 1, 2000, and we want to make sure that the Nation’s Capital is fully prepared. Steve Horn and I remember 31⁄2

years ago when we had the first joint subcommittee’s hearing on

Y2K. That was the time when everybody thought Y2K, with the exception of a few, was a breakfast cereal, well, it’s not. And the time

is now.

And we determined that the Federal Government is working

much too slowly on that. We’ve been working with the administration since then to ensure that the Federal Government will operate

without interruption, and there will be end-to-end contracts to

11

make sure that there is compliance. And we helped to create a national Federal strategy, finally happened.

We’ve had agencies reporting to us on a quarterly basis and moving out to contractors, State and local government and internationally. It was just a year since this Subcommittee on the District of

Columbia, the Subcommittee on Government Management, Information, and Technology and the Subcommittee on Technology conducted an oversight hearing to examine the status of the District

of Columbia’s Y2K compliance efforts.

At that time it was determined that the District had only begun

to address the year 2000 problem, and in June 1998, that was

much later than the surrounding metropolitan jurisdictions and

aroused some concern with us. The District had made only limited

progress in addressing the year 2000 problem. It lacked both a

structure and the resources necessary to do so. Well, according to

an article in the Washington Post earlier this week, although the

District is less than 90 percent complete on their Y2K work, expectations are that city residents will enter the millennium without

major disruptions.

I know there is still concerns, including insufficient funding for

Y2K, the unmet needs, slow procurement processes, ineffective

communication and coordination among District agencies.

And then today, we read in the paper that the District of Columbia has lost track of how some of this money has been spent, particularly the $120 million that was allocated for its late start in

Y2K. I firmly believe that with the strength, expertise and management capabilities of the District leadership, such as the distinguished panel before us, that we can together overcome these deficiencies in correcting the year 2000 problem, and that we will have

answered today the extent of the problem, the solution, where the

money has come from, how it has been used.

So I look forward to hearing from our distinguished panelists. I

thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having this meeting at this time and

for your excellent oversight over the District of Columbia, our Capital City, of which I’m very proud. Thank you.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much.

And now I would yield to the gentleman from California, who has

shown a lot of leadership on the Y2K issue nationally.

Mr. HORN. Well, I thank the chairman. I will yield any time I

might have spent listening to myself to the Mayor of Washington,

DC, and his fine team so we can hear what’s going on. Thank you.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Let me call our panel of witnesses up to testify Mayor Anthony

Williams, Connie Newman, vice chairman of the Control Board,

Kathy Patterson of the D.C. City Council, Susan Peck, the District’s chief technology officer, and two representatives of the General Accounting Office, Jack Brock, who will report on operational

issues, and Gloria Jarmon, who will address financial issues.

As you know, it’s the policy of this committee that all witnesses

be sworn before they testify. So if you could rise with me and raise

your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. DAVIS. I thank you. You can be seated.

12

To afford sufficient time for questions, we’ll have the testimony,

if you could limit yourselves to no more than 5 minutes, we will

have a light on. And at the end of 4 minutes, the yellow light will

go on and it will give you a minute to sum up. We will open it up

for questions.

Mr. HORN. Mr. Chairman, if I might, can we also limit ourselves

to 5 minutes. We do that in our own subcommittee.

Mr. DAVIS. We can go to an additional round if we need to, and

we will do that.

Mr. HORN. Thank you.

Mr. DAVIS. All written statements from witnesses will be made

a part of the permanent record, and we will begin with Mayor Williams, followed by Councilmember Patterson, Control Board Chairman Newman, the CTO, Susan Peck, and the GAO Directors Jack

Brock and Gloria Jarmon.

Mayor Williams, thank you very much for being with us. I think

Ms. Norton made it clear that a lot of these problems didn’t begin

on your watch. You, in fact, if anything, have given it appropriate

focus since you’ve been here, and we appreciate it. Thank you.

STATEMENTS OF ANTHONY WILLIAMS, MAYOR, DISTRICT OF

COLUMBIA; CONSTANCE NEWMAN, VICE CHAIRMAN, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND

MANAGEMENT ASSISTANCE AUTHORITY; KATHLEEN PATTERSON, COUNCILMEMBER, WARD 3, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CITY COUNCIL; SUZANNE PECK, CHIEF TECHNOLOGY

OFFICER, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA; JACK BROCK, DIRECTOR,

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT ISSUES, ACCOUNTING AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT DIVISION, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE; AND GLORIA JARMON, DIRECTOR,

HEALTH, EDUCATION AND HUMAN SERVICES ACCOUNTING

AND FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT ISSUES, ACCOUNTING AND

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT DIVISION, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE

Mayor WILLIAMS. Right. But, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Norton, and members of the committee, as Congresswoman Norton has

stated, you accept everything on your watch, because I’m here now.

And so this is a top priority, and we’re going to see it through.

But I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you to discuss

our readiness efforts for Y2K. And before I begin, I would like to

take a moment and thank our Congresswoman, Eleanor Holmes

Norton for her assistance in facilitating the approval of the Federal

OMB funds for this effort, because we would not be where we are

now, where I think we are, which is substantial progress, but for

that funding. And we appreciate it, and it is acknowledged.

In our February testimony, we stated and we recognize that the

District was behind almost every comparable municipality in its

Y2K compliance and stated that our late start would not prevent

us, however, from successful completion of the Y2K project. And

while we’re still committed to that promise, we must acknowledge

that there is much work to be done in a very short time. Throughout my testimony, I’m going to discuss steps that we’ve taken to

ensure that there is no disruption in District services on January

1, 2000.

13

Despite the serious challenges that we face, including a late

start, significantly outdated technology and a broken governmental

structure, I believe much progress has, in fact, been made. Many

agencies, particularly the public safety agencies, Metropolitan Police Department, Fire and Emergency Services, Department of Corrections, Emergency Management Agency, are well on their way toward Y2K compliance, and that is detailed in my written testimony. And I won’t go into it in detail, but I do refer you to it.

In her testimony, Susan Peck, our chief technology officer, will

provide specific details regarding our Y2K remediation efforts. Y2K

is a top priority, and we are treating it as such. We’ve instituted

a monitoring function to track the progress of our activities and

eliminate obstacles to their success.

The status of the Y2K project is on the agenda of every weekly

cabinet meeting that I personally chair. Since May, I have also in

addition to this conducted an executive steering committee meeting

every 2 weeks specifically to review the progress on Y2K. In addition to all of our agency heads that I mandate that each of them

personally attend this meeting, John Koskinen, the President’s

Y2K chair, and representatives from the GAO and OMB attend

these meetings.

Additionally, the city administrator has daily meetings with key

project and supply line staff to review the activities required to ensure that the District is functioning as we intend. In addition, we

have initiated a resource review panel to conduct detailed implementation reviews.

We’re working closely with this panel, which reports directly to

the city administrator, and is comprised of the agency senior managers in charge of major Y2K efforts, the chief technology—excuse

me, chief financial officer, as well as our chief procurement officer.

The resource review panel charter is to, No. 1, assess the state

of Y2K readiness of the District’s most critical business processes;

and, two, prioritize the allocation of resources to the tasks which

remain in order to ensure continuity and operations.

The panel’s initial reviews were completed earlier this week, and

in the coming days we will have their report depicting a more clear

view of the scope and priorities of the work that remains.

Let me say a word about contingency planning. We believe that

the most critical agencies have a low risk of failure; however, we

are taking nothing for granted and have conducted extensive contingency planning in all of the mission critical agencies. Additional

work is scheduled for rigorous testing of these contingency plans.

Our contingency planning is being performed in two phases within

each agency. In phase 1, we’re formulating our alternative means

of doing business should a failure occur; and in phase 2, we rehearse what is necessary should any contingencies be needed.

Specifically, the second phase consists of making sure that plans

are feasible, resources are in place to implement the plans and the

plans are tested. We’re being proactive in our contingency planning

by ensuring that funding is in place and appropriate procurement

actions are taken. We’ve completed phase 1 contingency planning

except in a few isolated instances and have begun phase 2 planning

in many areas.

14

For example, in Department of Public Works, we’ve conducted

simulations as well as field tests. Tomorrow, Saturday, we will test

the administrative aspects of business processes for snow removal,

and a field test will be conducted later this year. Now as you can

imagine, this process has been made even more important by special events that will be held on the Mall on New Year’s Eve, such

as the millennium event. So what is already logistically challenging

has now increased in geometric proportion, but I believe we will be

prepared for that.

We’re also planning and practicing for less visible but equally important business processes. I believe we have sound plans for payroll and pensions. We have detailed procedures for Medicaid payments, disability compensation and other related financial systems.

We have plans for emergency procurements and facilities management. And we have plans for health and medical processes.

In fact, of the 86 business processes that we have identified as

critical, we have contingency plans completed for all but three, two

of which will be complete this month, and the remaining one will

be completed next month.

While the contingency plans are critical to our Y2K success, they

will also serve as foundation for future business process improvement efforts. Now, in terms of various areas of concern, while I am

pleased with our progress, we take nothing for granted; therefore,

we have tasked our city administrator with conducting an independent review, and this is typical of all major systems efforts and

independent verification validation of our District’s Y2K efforts.

An international accounting and management consulting firm

conducted this and delivered a preliminary draft of their findings

earlier this month. Given their findings, we have two areas of concern. The first concern and most troubling to me as a former CFO

is a lack of stringent financial management and tracking for the

Y2K effort. While the bulk of costs have been incurred for IBM

services and these costs can be tracked at the various levels, the

District currently cannot frankly and candidly attribute expenditures to specific agencies or Y2K functions.

This Wednesday, September 22nd, a new financial team was put

in place to, one, support day-to-day operations, and within the coming weeks, give us a detailed depiction of these expenditures.

Second, because of our late start, we were forced to deploy numerous resources simultaneously and conduct many activities in

parallel. Specifically, responsibility for mediation and testing of

mission critical systems and applications is shared by both the Y2K

project office and individual agencies.

This strategy has led to a somewhat fragmented management

structure and inconsistencies in reporting of progress. We will continue conducting the resource review panel in daily city administrator’s Y2K meetings; in the coming days, we will take the necessary actions to strengthen the program management for this critical close of this activity.

We are committed to implementing a sound process to not only

get this project done in a timely fashion, get it done in an effective

fashion, but get it done in terms of financial and management reporting that gives everyone the confidence and comfort level that

I think this project deserves.

15

I have additional testimony, but it’s in writing and will be submitted for the record. And I thank the committee for the opportunity to appear today and answer later any questions you may

have.

[The prepared statement of Mayor Williams follows:]

16

17

18

19

20

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Ms. Patterson.

Ms. PATTERSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, I am

Kathy Patterson. I’m the chairman of the D.C. Council’s Committee

on Government Operations which has oversight responsibility for

information technology. Chairman Linda Cropp asked me to testify

on her behalf on the District’s efforts to ensure Y2K compliance.

We have made considerable progress during the last year, and

we have adhered closely to the timetables set out by Mrs. Peck

when she became chief technology officer last year. In the final

months of the project, we have very little margin for error, with remediation targeted for completion at the end of this month and the

implementation of fully compliant and tested systems scheduled for

November. Yet there has been abiding strengths in this process.

The District’s Y2K project has demonstrated the ability to track

progress or the lack thereof very closely and to take quick and effective corrective action when needed.

At one point or another, for example, the District’s information

technology systems for payroll, unemployment insurance and criminal justice systems have verged on Y2K failure. But the project

staff have intervened and resolved those problems. To date the District has not experienced any Y2K-related failures. This is important empirical evidence because many programs have already

begun inputting dates into the year 2000 and beyond.

Although the outcome of Y2K project is largely in the hands of

agency managers, the legislature has a continuing and important

role. The Council and its committees must maintain oversight of

this effort. And we have used our law making powers to aid in the

conversion. During the past year and a half the Committee on Government Operations has held a regular series of oversight hearings

on Y2K and has also reviewed the progress of the project in budget

performance review and management reform hearings.

We’ve had joint hearings this year, three to date, on Y2K and

human services, public safety and public utilities in partnership

with relevant other council committees. Our final Y2K hearing on

contingency planning is set for November 17th. This past Wednesday we had an overview of Y2K readiness on the part of public utilities, specifically Pepco, Washington Gas and Bell Atlantic; each

witness representing each utility testified that they are Y2K ready.

One concern I have coming out of that hearing is the oversight

to date by the Public Service Commission. The PSC began its Y2K

oversight last year but did not until this September contract with

a consultant for independent verification, and validation of all the

readiness statements made by the utilities themselves. The commission’s consultant is scheduled to report in mid-November on

that effort.

Another concern raised by public witnesses Wednesday concerns

areas of readiness in areas that are not strictly speaking government responsibilities, such as the supply chain for food, health

equipment and medicine and other critical commercial goods, and

we are adding such issues to the schedule for our November oversight hearing.

One concern raised by the utility witnesses was the impact of the

celebrations on the Mall on other public safety resources. The abilVerDate 11-SEP-98 10:52 May 23, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\63439.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
21

ity of a Pepco repair truck to get to the hospital with a power outage will depend on police assistance, for example, and ongoing discussions among the utilities, the public safety agencies, facilitated

by our emergency preparedness agency and the technology office,

will address these concerns.

We cannot rely on self reports. We must insist on independent

verification and validation for utilities as well as our own government agencies. I am pleased that the District’s chief technology officer, earlier contracted for two different sources of independent

verification and validation, using alternate test methodologies for

its own Y2K project, and we will continue to monitor the ongoing

work of the District’s Public Service Commission in this regard.

In addition to oversight, the Council has also used its legislative

powers to support the successful Y2K conversion. In 1998, we established the Office of the Chief Technology Officer as a separate

agency with authority for information technology policy standards

and technical assistance.

We also enacted legislation, the Year 2000 Government Computer Immunity Act of 1998, which immunizes the District against

any lawsuit or administrative action arising from Y2K failure.

More recently, we acted swiftly to streamline our own contract review process to expedite Y2K procurements. In July again the

Council acted to allow the receipt and approval of contracts during

our legislative recess.

This rule change allowed several important Y2K contracts to go

forward, including a 4.2 million contract for a unified computer

aided 911 dispatch system for police and fire departments. The

Council has been a partner in the Y2K effort in providing oversight

and clearing away statutory and regulatory roadblocks.

Let me conclude my testimony with a note of optimism. The District’s investment in the Y2K project and the anxiety and hard

work that has accompanied it will pay off long after the final data

field is fixed. Through this particular trial by fire, we have developed capacity in the information technology field that we simply

did not have before.

We now have a strong and effective central technology office. We

have technology standards to ensure that new systems and equipment are state-of-the-art. We have an inventory of all information

technology systems and equipment. We’ve developed contingency

plans that can serve as the basis for disaster recovery. We’ve replaced obsolete systems and are consolidating and upgrading our

data centers.

We need to preserve and extend these gains by developing applications that will improve public services and by exploring new

technologies such as electronic commerce.

Finally, I would like to comment very briefly on the article in today’s Washington Post relative to Y2K funding and tracking. I do

anticipate that the GAO witnesses will correct any of the overstatements contained in that news article. But I just would like to share

a concern. There has been a tension evident in our government

that derives from the extraordinary independence granted the chief

financial officer by Congress during the control year.

That independence means that an operating agency director does

not have a financial officer reporting to him or her. The agency

22

CFO reports instead to the District CFO. In the case of Y2K expenditure tracking, the Inspector General has noted difficulties in

sharing data, and I suspect that this results at least in part from

the fragmented responsibility.

The issue of the independence of the CFO is something we need

to carefully consider as we contemplate moving out of the control

year. It is my own view that in a reform government, financial officials should report to elected officials so we all know whom to hold

accountable.

I would also just point out for the record that the Inspector General is also under my committee’s oversight purview, and among

our audit plans right now is an audit to determine whether the Office of the Chief Technology Officer has controls in place to ensure

the reasonableness of expenditures and to properly account for and

monitor funding amounts, so that audit work is ongoing.

Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Patterson follows:]

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

Mr. DAVIS. You summed up just as the red light turned. Good

timing, that’s experience.

Ms. Newman, thank you for being with us.

Ms. NEWMAN. Good morning, Chairman Davis and Congresswoman Norton and members of the subcommittee. I am representing the Financial Authority, and we’re pleased to appear before you

today to offer an update on the District of Columbia’s progress

achieving Y2K conversion compliance.

I will also address briefly the District’s overall readiness and the

challenges that remain. Achieving Y2K readiness is of critical importance to the District’s ability to provide services to the city’s

residents and visitors alike. The authority’s role in the District

Y2K readiness is to provide this city with financial oversight and—

you’ve got a red light on, I will talk fast though—financial oversight and technical review of key systems.

Technical review consists primarily for us identifying at risk systems and monitoring the status of their repair or replacement. In

addition, preparation for the new millennium must include the development and testing of contingency plans to address the possibility that certain systems will not work as anticipated. System failures could result either from unforeseen problems in the District’s

own computer hardware and software or from glitches and service

provided to the District such as telecommunications or electricity.

Recent reports indicate that marked progress has been made on

a variety of critical projects under way to ready the District for

January 1, the development of an inventory of all District computer

systems and identification of systems within the inventory that are

vulnerable to Y2K problems is complete.

In addition, nearly two-thirds of those assets either were found

to be fully compliant, have been fixed and tested or were replaced

with Y2K compliant systems. We expect to receive additional positive reports during the next few weeks as the District’s aggressive

schedule for the final phases of repair and testing is completed.

Finally, contingency plans have been developed for 89 of the 94

mission critical business processes that were identified within the

District, and we understand that the remaining 5 will be submitted

for review by the end of October.

With respect to the work that remains to be completed, the Authority is working with District officials to ensure that the highest

priority be given to achieving Y2K readiness of all systems impacting, health, safety and economic welfare. In addition, we are monitoring the testing of contingency plans and working with the Mayor’s office to ensure that adequate resources will be in place to respond to any emergencies that may arise on New Year’s Day.

On the financial front, it is fair to say that the District was late

in instituting rigorous financial accounting and reporting to account for the Y2K expenditures. We really should not offer and

cannot offer an excuse for this, but to a significant extent this

delay is simply a reflection of the District’s late start overall in addressing Y2K problems.

A tight timeframe necessitated an extremely aggressive schedule

of work in which securing resources to begin addressing Y2K took

precedence over other considerations, including financial accounting and reporting. In spite of the tight schedules, however, the

32

Authority’s determined to arrive at detailed accounting of the resources expended to address Y2K readiness. To this end, we are

working closely with the Y2K program office, the chief financial officer and the principal vendors to identify all Y2K expenditures and

relate them to work accomplished.

This concludes my prepared statement. I will have a couple of

comments I would like to make in response to my friend the honorable Kathy Patterson, but I will do it later.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Newman follows:]

33

34

35

Mr. DAVIS. Your green light is on.

Ms. PATTERSON. It’s OK, I will do it later.

Mr. DAVIS. I wish Eleanor would have waited until later. I guess

we can go to Susan Peck. Thank you.

Mrs. PECK. Chairman Davis, Representative Norton, members of

the subcommittee, I’m Susan Peck, the chief technology officer for

the District of Columbia. At the outset I would like to thank Mayor

Williams for his strong leadership of the District’s Y2K efforts.

We focused our Y2K efforts in the District on those city agencies

that are most mission critical for the safety, health and well-being

of District residents. These are on the chart to your left. We’re

tracking to a comprehensive aggressive plan to ensure that District

provided services in these mission critical agencies are not——

Mr. DAVIS. Let me just interrupt you. I can’t see anything. That’s

a little better.

Mrs. PECK. They begin with agencies, No. 1, Metropolitan Police

Department, through No. 18, D.C. General Hospital, and are the

critical—are the mission critical public safety, public health organizations in the city.

Mrs. MORELLA. Do we have a chart?

Mr. DAVIS. Let’s turn them around. I think we’ve now located the

charts here. You’re not being charged for the time, and turn this

around so the audience and the press can and the cameras can see

it.

Mrs. PECK. There’s 18 because they are pneumonics on your

chart. The Metropolitan Police Department, No. 1; Fire and Emergency Management, No. 2; Emergency Management Association,

No. 3; the Water and Sewer Authority; Department of Health; the

Department of Human Services; Department of Employment Services; the chief financial officer; the Department of Public Works;

the Department of Corrections, D.C. Public Schools; Consumer and

Regulatory Authority; the lottery; contracts and—Office of Contracts and Procurement; Office of Personnel; the Mental Health Authority, which is St. Elizabeth’s; University of the District of Columbia; PBC; and No. 19 are agencies which are not themselves

mission critical, but have mission critical functions.

Our plan for the District is on two tracks. First, we are finding

and fixing all date-related problems in the District’s mission critical computers and equipment. And second, we are building and

testing alternate operating plans, contingency plans, for every mission critical business process that delivers services to District residents.

Let me bring you up to date on where we are in our find and

fix plans for the systems and equipment in the District. Of 370

business applications in the District’s inventory, 242 or 65 percent

are Y2K ready as they stand, remediated, tested and production

ready. Of these same 370 systems, 223 have been designated as

mission critical. Of these, 130 are Y2K ready as they stand; 23 remain to be remediated; 39 have been remediated and are in testing; and 31 are in process of testing only.

The last of the 223 mission critical systems will be completing

their testing by the end of October with return to production

planned for November. We’re remediating mission critical systems

in 38 partitions or packets of like systems. Four of these partitions

36

are on slippage watch, meaning that an especially focused attention

is being paid and substantial resources infused to assure their

schedule recovery and timeliness.

Our current strategy is to focus even more now on recovering any

slippage watch systems in priority order on using our management

data to help us pay meticulous attention to slippages when they

first occur and to prioritizing our resources to the District’s most

mission critical areas.

Of our embedded chip assets, including equipment as varied as

traffic control signals, utility meters, copiers, metal detectors and

defibrillators, as of August 30th, over 63,000 of these assets were

inventoried in the District; 25,000 of these are mission critical, but

as we stand today, only 368 or 1.5 percent still need to be fixed or

repaired.

Contingency planning continues to be a major focus of the District’s Y2K initiative. We focused our planning on 94 critical services. I’m pleased to report that the phase 1 contingency planning

activities, the writing of the contingency plans, is completed for 90

of those 94 critical business processes; plans for the remaining 4

processes will be completed by the end of October.

Phase 2 contingency planning has begun and falls within the

scope of responsibility of the city administrator. Implementation

and testing of these plans in their agencies is expected to complete

in November.

The Y2K schedule we’ve managed is one we’ve maintained despite numerous hurdles, impediments and discoveries that have

broadly expanded the scope of the project as it was originally envisioned and defined. The extent of dedicated pre-remediation technical assistance required in order for the actual systems remediation to progress in the District was simply not anticipated at the

project’s outset.

These activities have absorbed a substantial percentage of the

project’s resources. We’ve also experienced substantial challenges

with our financial management.

With all of these challenges, however, and, nevertheless, Y2K

has had significant positioning advantages for the District’s future

technology improvement plans. The presence of over 300 business

and technical professionals across the agencies has infused new

levels of technical expertise, business planning, project management and task management into agency structures.

And in many other ways, the Y2K project is also helping us move

to a performance-based technology culture for the future in the District.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mrs. Peck follows:]

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

Mr. DAVIS. Suzanne, thank you very much.

Mr. Brock, thanks for being here.

Mr. BROCK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good morning to the other members of the subcommittee. I’ve

also had the privilege of testifying before Mrs. Morella and Mr.

Horn on other Y2K issues such as the Postal Service and the Department of Defense.

I would like to briefly go over three topics; the Y2K status of the

District, the challenges facing the District in the remainder of the

year and opportunities for lessons learned.

In terms of the status, if you read my statement, you will see differences in the numbers between mine and Mrs. Peck’s. I think this

is largely attributable to, one, some differences in coverage, and,

second, our cutoff date for our data was largely September the

16th, and she has had some updates since then.

In October, I testified before you, and I said that the District was

a year late. And in February I testified before you, and I said the

District was a year late. Today I’m testifying and the District is

late. There’s nothing to do about that. They started late and it’s

right against the wire, as the witnesses from the District have said.

And just so there won’t be any misunderstanding as I get into

my statement, I would like to say in our review of what people are

doing to remediate the system, that we find that the District has

an approach that’s reasonable and that people in the District are

working very, very diligently to take corrective action.

With that said, I would like to spend a little bit of time talking

about the status. We’re primarily looking at 18 mission critical departments. They are the top 18 agencies, and their Y2K office

tracks 70 critical projects within those agencies. Right now, only

14, or at the time of the end of our review on the 16th, only 14

of those projects were implemented. That means we have another

56 that are still ready—that are still in the wings. They’re either

being renovated or they’re being tested or they’re in the final

stages of implementation.

So there is still a significant amount of work to do before the end

of the year. In terms of the contingency planning, at the time of

our review the District still had 11 of their phase 1 plans to complete. Most of those were in the Office of Consumer and Regulatory

Affairs, and I understand that since then several others have been

completed.

The phase 2 planning, which is most important, that’s when you

take a piece of paper and you say we’re going to do something to

make it operational, we did not have the status of these plans at

the time of the end of our review. They’re under way, but we did

not have the schedule as to when they’re to be complete. So that’s

the status.

I think the most important part today—the status, is the status—are the challenges. And the District has 98 days, and we

think that it has two principal challenges. The first challenge is

that regardless of what’s happened in the past there’s a lot of work

to finish, and some of these tests are scheduled late into November.

A few are scheduled early in December. There’s very little room for

error. There’s no room for error. If there are any additional slippages, then the District could be in trouble on some of these.

51

Second, of the projects that have not yet been completed, and our

review of the schedules, shows some slippages. So slippages have

occurred. Now, the District has made adjustments to their schedule

to account for this, and they’re still scheduled to be complete before

the end of the year. But I bring this point up just to indicate that

slippages can occur in schedules. This makes the contingency planning for systems and the business continuity planning all the more

important.

So our recommendations to the District are ones that they’ve already recognized, that, one, the District needs to have a consistent

source of information they use to make management decisions. And

they need to keep their eye on the ball, as systems progress, as the

projects progress, as the contingency plans progress, to look for evidence of slippages, to look for opportunities to reprioritize, if necessary to redirect resources, and to direct attention on the most important areas, so that in fact the District will have every assurance

at the end of the year that it will be ready.

Last, I would like to address the opportunities that the District

has, and I think these opportunities are significant. Mrs. Patterson

and Mrs. Peck both recognize that there were things that occurred

in the District in the past that were really things that you could

take advantage of to improve in the future.

The simple reason the District is so far behind in addressing the

Y2K problem is it did not have effective management at all over

its information technology assets and projects. It had no management processes in place that provided adequate attention to the

pending Y2K problem. As a result, it started late. Further, as Mrs.

Peck indicated, once they got into the project, they found that there

was no system documentation for many systems. They didn’t have

a complete inventory for systems.

It was difficult to get started by capitalizing on the efforts that

they’ve had to go through in order to get to the stage they’re at

right now. The District has learned that Y2K efforts cannot succeed

without the involvement of top-level managers at the agency level

and at the city level.

The District has recognized that having complete and accurate

information on information systems can facilitate remediation and

testing and validation efforts. This is critical for any system development effort, whether it’s for Y2K or otherwise. The District has

developed a better understanding of its core business processes and

has made some progress in prioritizing its mission critical systems

based on their impact on these processes.

And then, finally, the District, like many other organizations

that we’ve looked at, found that they needed to take special steps

in order to increase their technical capabilities to address this problem, and they have in fact done so. I think these measures are appropriate for the District as they’re looking for future technology

management and hopefully they can learn from this.

That concludes my summary, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Brock follows:]

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Brock.

Mrs. Jarmon, thank you for being here.

Mrs. JARMON. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, and members of the

subcommittee, I’m pleased to be here today to respond to your

questions related to the financial management of the District’s Y2K

effort. As several of the witnesses have mentioned, the District is

aware and has spoke to the fact that there have been financial

management problems related to this effort.

You asked us to respond to some specific questions related to financial management and that’s what my statement today will address. It will primarily cover three points: One, the funds provided

in the District’s reported expenditures to date; two, the District’s

ability to track its Y2K costs; and, three, the additional funding request requested by the District.

First in regard to funds provided and reported as expenditures.

As shown in table 1 of my statement, on page 3, the District’s draft

financial reports for a period from June 1998 to September 15,

1999 show that almost $100 million had been provided for Y2K efforts during that time.

These reports show that of this amount about $42 million had

been spent and $54 million had been obligated, leaving remaining

funds of almost $2 million.

In regard to my second point, on the District’s ability to track

Y2K costs, District officials told us, and they’ve mentioned today,

they have had significant problems in tracking Y2K costs and expenditures. They attribute this primarily due to significant turnover in key financial positions, and we were aware of that and we

noted that also.

Over the past few weeks, the District officials had spent considerable resources in their efforts to better track their Y2K costs.

During this time, however, which is during the time of our review,

we received inconsistent and unreliable cost data from them, and

these schedules continued to change.

It was apparent that the District did not have reliable financial

data to manage the Y2K project costs and District officials are currently reviewing their costs and have found examples of invoices

received and paid even though the District’s financial management

system had no corresponding purchase orders or contract-related

information.

They found examples of invoices paid without adequate documentation to justify the amounts paid, and they found examples of

contractor bills that were paid even though the time charges were

inaccurate. And from what we’ve seen, the contractor bills have

been adjusted for these inaccuracies that the District found.

These practices seem to go on because the District had no clear

process for reviewing and verifying invoices submitted by contractors prior to making payments. And I’m specifically referring to the

Y2K invoices.

These kinds of problems, however, with financial management in

the District are not new and have been reported by GAO, the District’s Office of Inspector General and the District’s external auditors. In addition, we were told yesterday, and this was mentioned

in the Post article this morning, that because of these financial

management problems the District plans to hire a CPA firm to help

69

it track its Y2K costs, and also the District’s Inspector General

plans to begin audit work in this area sometime this fall.

Meanwhile the District’s difficulties in tracking its Y2K costs

make it impossible at this point to determine whether these funds

were spent properly.

In regard to my third point on the additional requests fund, as

shown in table 2 to my statement on page 7, the District has requested about $91 million in additional funding from OMB to complete its Y2K efforts. They were informed late this week that $22

million of this amount is available, and the remaining request is

being reviewed by OMB.

In summary, the District cannot reliably track how the funds

that had been received have been spent, nor say with any degree

of certainty that the amounts have been spent properly. Given the

urgency of the tasks of addressing the Y2K problem and the fact

that the District is behind schedule, it is essential that the District

have accountability for Y2K funds and to do careful planning,

budgeting and tracking of expenditures. Without this kind of discipline over its efforts, it cannot assure the Congress that the additional funds requested will be spent as intended.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement. I will be happy to

answer questions from you or other members of the subcommittee.

[The prepared statement of Mrs. Jarmon follows:]

70

71

72

73

74

75

76

77

78

79

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much. I’m going to start the questioning with the gentleman from California. I just make one comment.

I’m looking at the District of Columbia mission critical business

process, Y2K contingency planning, in terms of where everything

is, where the plans develop, where it’s tested, where it’s implemented, and the one that is all green is—fortunately, you have the

eligibility benefits, and those issues which are important to D.C.

residents. But you also have the revenue generated, because I noticed the lottery appears to be Y2K compliant as well.

And I’ll bet you, I can’t find it, but I’ll bet you that the parking

tickets are probably Y2K compliant. That has always worked in the

city even when everything else may be off.

But the gentleman from California, who, I might add, has just

been a national leader on the Y2K, will start the questioning for

5 minutes, and then to Ms. NORTON.

Mr. HORN. As I recall, at the last Y2K hearing in February we

were assured that the executive steering committee of the District,

which had some of the city’s top officials, was central to resolving

the problems involved.

And I guess I’m asking, I’m told that the committee has not met

since December 1998 to June 1999. Can somebody explain that to

me?

Ms. NEWMAN. I can start by saying that at the beginning of this

Mayor’s administration, the decision was to honor his way of managing these kinds of projects. This did not mean that the people

who were officially involved and listed on the committee were not

involved.

We have weekly meetings with the Mayor and his staff. I must

say that every week the issue of Y2K compliance comes up in some

form or another. There have been the meetings that the Mayor has

that I’m sure he will speak about, where there are representatives

from the Council and the Authority who meet on a regular basis.

So the fact that that formal group has not met should not concern

you, because the people who were——

Mr. HORN. Thank you.

Mr. Brock, I think you said that there was a lack of management

focus here. Is that part of it or are there other things?

Mr. BROCK. When we started this second or third review, Mr.

Horn, we did look for evidence of whether the steering committee

had met; it had not met. We knew that activities were taking place.

For example, I go to the DOD steering committee every month. We

also go to the IRS steering committee, et cetera. These are very

useful in terms of bringing issues to the table and having all the

parties there and resolving them on the spot.

The initial meetings where we reviewed the minutes of those

meetings seem to be more oriented toward status checking as opposed to using that as an opportunity to refocus priorities. Since

that time, there has now been an increased focus on using forums

like that to reach decisions and redirect resources.

Mr. HORN. Mrs. Peck, let me direct this to you. As I understand,

the contract with IBM, the prime Y2K contractor, lapsed and many

of the contract consultants were removed and weeks of work were

either interrupted or lost. How come?

80

Mrs. PECK. I think, Mr. Horn, you’re probably referring to a

slight pause between phase 1 and phase 2 of the contingency planning. There was a very, very substantial group of IBM consultants

helping the agencies on phase 1 of the plan. The long-term strategy

for phase 2 of the plan was that the actual implementation of those

written plans would be done principally in the agencies. And so

there was a planned withdrawal of a substantial number of the

consultants who had worked on phase 1. Our discovery was

that——

Mr. HORN. Excuse me. Are those consultants the ones who would

be remediating the various codes and tapes?

Mrs. PECK. The consultants have various functions. Some were

code remediators. All of these that I’m speaking of were contingency plan writers, helping the agencies write the contingency

plans.

Mr. HORN. Have you had a difficulty in getting people to remediate the codes? Are we out of shortage of supply here?

Mrs. PECK. No.

Mr. HORN. OK. So you’re OK on that because I would suggest if

you aren’t, and a lot of them are in COBOL; is that not correct?

Mrs. PECK. That’s correct.

Mr. HORN. I would ask for the Office of Personnel Management

to run a tab on it and get those that are still retired and not back

in, and they’ve been very supportive in terms of you can keep your

pension, you can get your wonderful contract. And it seems to me,

if you’re short there, that you ought to call on them.

Let me ask you this, because I’ve got to move with the 5-minute

rule that I’m a strong believer in. To date only 130 or 58 percent

by our math, of these systems that are year 2000 ready, how confident are you that you can fix, test, put the remaining systems

into production by November? Do you feel, Mrs. Peck, you can do

that?

Mrs. PECK. My arithmetic on the same figures is a little different, because the 130—I count if they are remediated and they

are in testing, because the remediation is a very substantive part.

Of the mission critical systems, 90 percent of those on the same

numbers that you’re counting, you’re counting 130 over 223, I count

200 over 223, because I count all of those that have been remediated and are now in testing. I am confident. We just yesterday had

a very substantial——

Mr. HORN. I will take that answer. Let me, with one question to

go here, the District’s unemployment benefit program, have we

looked at that? Because that’s one of those things that a lot of people would be hurt if they don’t get their check on time. How are

we on that one?

Mrs. PECK. Both the employment benefits and the employment

tax system come out of our Department of Employment Services.

Both of those systems are on schedule. The legacy employment benefits contingency remediation is complete and waiting on the shelf,

in case our new employment benefit system, which is planned for

production October 18th, is not ready. But in point of fact we expect our legacy remediated system never to come off the shelf because we expect the new system to be there. In terms of the unemployment tax system, it will be in production on October 4th.

81

Mr. HORN. I thank you all, and my colleagues can ask the rest

of the questions.

Mr. DAVIS. I thank the gentleman.

I now recognize the gentlelady from the District of Columbia, Ms.

NORTON. Ms. NORTON. In terms of the difficulties that the city has had in

the financial management of the Y2K process, I recall that with

some difficulty we got a financial management system authorization out of the Congress a couple of years ago. And so you are, I

take it, doing Y2K compliance at the same time you’re instituting

a new financial management system.

I would like to know whether or not that has had anything—how

that system has worked with this process and whether that has

had anything to do with any of the problems encountered?

Mrs. PECK. Actually, one of the advantages that we have had on

this project is the fact that our new financial management system,

SOAR, is Y2K compliant. That is a very substantive system for the

city and the fact that it was compliant was an advantage to us.

Ms. NORTON. At the same time there have been indications that

there have been glitches in instituting the financial management

system in agencies around the city. That’s what I’m referring to.

I recognize that was compliant.

How does that fit with tracking Y2K, the Y2K expenditures?

Mayor WILLIAMS. If I could speak to that. I think that, you know,

Congresswoman Norton, any kind of system in my mind is not just

hardware and software, it’s people, it’s operations, it’s process. Certainly instituting the new financial management system, for example, a new financial management system requires our agencies to

do double entry bookkeeping, which the old system, even though it

was the old accounting system, didn’t do. So we were trained in a

whole new world of accounting. Enormous amount of training has

gone into instituting this system.

It’s very, very important that for this system to work and for any

system of financial control and reporting to work that there be in

the chair of Council operations—Kathy Patterson talked to this—

that it is important that program and financial management be—

have a unity of purpose and work together.

And one of the reasons why I strongly believe we want to bring

this financial team in here is that someone everyone can respect,

everyone can appreciate, they can go out and get this work done,

and we don’t have the finger pointing that none of us want to see

and none of us want.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you.

Ms. Patterson, I must say, I was concerned that only in March

did the process that the Congress insisted be put in place whereby

contracts of $1 million and over had to go to the Council, only in

March was that—that the Council took an effort to make sure that

that process was not a part of the problem. And in July, of course,

another action was taken to make sure that over the summer that

process was not part of the problem.

I just want to say that the Congress never put that process in

place because it believed that the Council should have jurisdiction

over contracts of $1 million or more. There is no executive in the

United States which has to go to its council. It put it in place beVerDate 11-SEP-98 10:52 May 23, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00084 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\63439.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
82

cause there was no Financial Control Board at the time or it was

just starting up, because the Congress had no way to check on

what seemed to be out-of-control contracting.

I, myself, must say I have not been very pleased with it, not because the Congress—the Council hasn’t taken action when it had

to, I was astounded in what we had to go through, and the Council

did take action on highways—and highways is something that

should never have had to go in the first place because of the way

that procurement takes place.

In any case, I believe that early on in the process that the Council was part of the problem that should have been waived instantly,

some other way found if you needed a check. And I need to know

whether or not there is a process that is automatically in place so

that this million dollars and over process, which was put in as an

emergency, which I think should be repealed at the end of the Control Board, whether or not, in fact, we have in place things that can

move more quickly to get that process out of the way when it’s part

of the problem.

Ms. PATTERSON. Ms. Norton, as you know, the requirement that

the Council review contracts over a million or multiyear is in the

charter, so there’s no legislation that we can do; that is something

that the Congress needs to act on.

Ms. NORTON. I’m not asking about that. I’m saying you have

done things. You did something in March, and you did something

in July. I’m talking about precisely that kind of streamlining when

you have an emergency, and that’s what Y2K was, and it seems to

me that there was—that March was too late to be deciding that

we’re going to streamline a process. Nothing in the charter kept

that from happening.

Ms. PATTERSON. In terms of the streamlining effort, one of the

things that we talked about in the hearing that my committee held

on Wednesday with Mrs. Peck was just as we were using the Y2K

challenge to improve our IT systems broadly, this streamlined procurement for Y2K can be a model for where we go for the entire

city, and that’s something we will be looking at over time.

Ms. NORTON. That is something I would urge upon you. And I

appreciate that you are looking at that.

Could I ask a question about coordination with the region? I

know the way we’re joined at the hip with the Federal Government, and that’s part of the reason that we got Federal funds.

When it comes to regional systems like Metro and water and

sewer, I’m sure they have their own systems. I need to know

whether or not in any other way they are tied into the District,

however, so that we need it or should be doing any coordination

with the region?

Mrs. PECK. We are doing two levels of coordination, Ms. Norton.

We are doing one level of coordination through the Council of Governments, and we on September 1st had quite a large regional Y2K

exercise with seven local regional entities and all of the District

agencies that was quite successful and gave us a good leg up on

actual scenarios that might happen at the date change.

We are also within the District doing a great deal of work on

interagency panels at a second level above individual units and at

a third level, in the Emergency Management Agency, the District’s

83

entire plan across all agencies comes together and from that plan

we link to the FEMA and to the Presidential levels if crisis management is necessary.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, my red light is up.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you. You will have another round. Let me just

ask a question if I can, and I think, Mrs. Peck, I will address it

first to you, and then I will allow the GAO to respond.

Was there, in fact, a lapse in a contract with IBM due to a lack

of authorization or availability of funding that caused the unplanned reduction of contract consultant resources?

Mrs. PECK. I would describe it as a pause as we understood that

we needed more resources in a successor phase of a project than

we had originally planned.

Mr. DAVIS. Let me ask you, Mr. Brock, what really happened

here that we can’t account for all of the billings and the hours? I

mean what went wrong here? Can we get any idea?

Mr. BROCK. Well, Mr. Davis, we don’t have any specific information on that lapse. We heard about it. One of the advantages of a

strong financial management system, however, it allows you to

have the checks and balances in there so that in fact you can, one,

track that as it goes on and, second, go back and retroactively do

any sort of analysis that you might want to do to look at the issues

such as this.

Mr. DAVIS. It could in fact just be bookkeeping at this point in

filling in the blanks and that nothing is amiss?

Mr. BROCK. That’s possible. But without further work, I would be

hesitant to say that.

Mr. DAVIS. There hasn’t been any allegations of any deliberate

wrongdoing or anything like that at this point, it’s just——

Mr. BROCK. We heard none during the course of our audit.

Mr. DAVIS. How much has been spent from June 1998 to now on

the District’s Y2K effort, and do you know how much Federal and

how much local and how much more money you think will be needed to get this—it probably will go past January 1, 2000?

Mrs. JARMON. The draft reports that we received from the District on Monday show that during that period of time from June

1998 to September 15, 1999, that they had spent about $42 million

and that they had obligated $54 million, and they weren’t able to

tell us whether they thought more was going to be needed, in addition to the supplemental requests that I mentioned in my statement. There was a supplemental request of about $6 to $8 million

that is being reviewed by OMB, and $22 million was received as

of this week.

Mr. DAVIS. I would just say on a supplemental request like that,

it would be wise to send it up here as well as OMB because Congress appropriates it. It is good to work through all that. But I

think Mr. Istook and Senator Hutchinson would like to be in that

loop as early as possible and not get hit, particularly in light of the

budget negotiations and everything.

Mrs. Peck, let me ask you, do you agree with those numbers at

this point and do you foresee about a $6 to $8 million range for additional money to get this thing done on Y2K? Do you know that?

Mrs. PECK. I know that we have——

84

Mr. DAVIS. $6 to $8 million, OK.

Mrs. PECK. I know that we have a total of $97.8 million now in

total funding with an additional $22 million in research receipt.

Mr. DAVIS. An additional $22 million in what.

Mrs. PECK. That we just recently received.

Mr. DAVIS. Received. OK. And do you foresee more money being

needed to finish this?

Mrs. PECK. Yes.

Mr. DAVIS. How much more?

Mrs. PECK. We have an additional funding request before OMB,

who gets cranky if we say the number before they’ve done their

analysis.

Mr. DAVIS. What did you ask for? I’m not asking what they said.

Mrs. PECK. We asked for $68 million additionally.

Mr. DAVIS. That was in the testimony. I want to make sure we’re

singing off the same sheet. You won’t have everything done on January 1. You’re on a tight timeline right now. And you feel the critical structures, you feel reasonably we will be in pretty good shape?

Mrs. PECK. I’m very confident that the mission critical services

will be delivered.

Mr. DAVIS. Some of the other items, you know, you want to get

them in as good shape as you can, but you don’t have the same

level of confidence obviously, because you had to prioritize; is that

correct?

Mrs. PECK. I’m confident in those mission critical services.

Mr. DAVIS. Right. But some of the other services they are probably not going—some of them may not be ready, is that a fair

statement?

Mrs. PECK. There’s surely going to be a handful that gets out

from under the rug, and that’s why we’ve done all of the extensive

contingency planning that we have done.

Mr. DAVIS. It’s not your fault. We knew you had a tight timeline

to get this done from day one and not a lot of room for error, and

this is pretty complex stuff and very time intensive and everything

else.

Do you have an explanation for what might have—where the

money that can’t be accounted for in the IBM contract, and why it’s

not accounted for and what we might do differently?

Mrs. PECK. We have gone over with the CFO extensively those

spends, and we find the IBM accounting to be accurate. They now,

when they submit their invoices, submit not only monthly invoices,

but submit inception to date statistics so that we can see every one

of their consultants for every month for every hour, for every agency that they’ve worked at. So I think we’re closing in on the problem of having that information.

Mr. DAVIS. Do you have a good enough staff, competent enough

staff, understanding the complexities of this issue, to sit over IBM

and know if they’re doing the right thing or not?

Mrs. PECK. Absolutely.

Mr. DAVIS. Let me just ask this. If you could rate it, how effective does GAO believe the District has been in managing the funds

it’s received?

Mrs. JARMON. To date, based on what we’ve seen, and we’ve primarily been looking at this over the last 2 or 3 weeks when we reVerDate 11-SEP-98 10:52 May 23, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00087 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\63439.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
85

ceived the questions, there have been a lot of problems, and the

management of the funds, you have to take into account the emergency nature of this, have not been effective during that time based

on what we’re looking at. We are encouraged by the recent efforts

and the plan to bring in additional expertise, but it hasn’t.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, my time is up. I’m going to yield to Mrs.

Morella. I will just say as often happens in emergencies we find

with FEMA and other groups, when you try and get the money

through and the contracts through sometimes the formalities of accounting for it takes second place to getting the mission done. And

I’m encouraged by the city’s attitude here that we want to sit and

make it right instead of just being defensive. This is tough.

At the end of the day, we will want to solve this problem, and

we want to solve it in a timely manner, that’s No. 1. There’s other

stuff, I think we try and work as we can.

Mrs. Morella, I’m going to recognize you, and then back to Ms.

Norton.

Mrs. MORELLA. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate it.

I appreciate all you coming here to discuss this very, very important issue, and I think the eyes of the Nation are on the District

of Columbia.

Mr. Brock, as usual it’s good to see you and to know that we

have with Mrs. Jarmon, we have GAO doing a lot of the monitoring, and I would agree with what you said in your testimony that

the plan shows that four projects won’t be tested until November,

and another seven in December. And as you said in your oral testimony, all of this is pretty risky.

So I guess I would ask you, in addition to thanking you for your

candid assessment of the situation of the readiness, which of the

District’s critical services could be jeopardized due to potential year

2000 failures?

Mr. BROCK. I think that any of the critical structures could be

in jeopardy because of the interrelationship among the various

services, which is one of the reasons the contingency planning, the

business continuity planning and the exercises they’re planning are

so critical, that until you do these types of exercises sometimes you

don’t recognize the interrelationships that something occurring in

one department actually has a ripple effect in another department.

That’s why fixing a system alone is not enough. Until you do the,

what we would call the end-to-end testing and test those systems

within a process, and then test the contingency plans and the business continuity plans to see that they will work, I would consider

the systems at risk.

Mayor WILLIAMS. Could I augment that or chime in there?

Mrs. MORELLA. Certainly, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor WILLIAMS. I think we want to be conservative, because I

think you managed to hear the problem, and we’ve got some problems and challenges that we recognize. But I think that, you know,

from the beginning of the year, we met with all of the agencies in

the cabinet once a week, you know, and queried them on a number

of top priorities, and in my world, everything is a top priority, and

you distinguish between the top priorities that are blowing up and

the top priorities that are just a simple top priority.

86

So there’s no—there is no excuse. I’m not going to sit here and

say there’s an excuse for not having convened the steering committee earlier. In hindsight I should have done that, but the fact is

you’re just managing a number of emergencies all the time, and I

thought that the cabinet was the right way to bring everything to

the table on a regular basis.

Second, we got information flow in terms of financial management, in terms of program management. We managed that information. The information we were getting is that the project was

challenging, but that it was on track. As we got additional information that we needed to make some judgments, we went out in the

field and did those adjustments, and we will continue to make

those adjustments.

Third, I want to assure everyone on the committee and everyone

in our city that this city is going to be ready, either because mission critical systems are going to work, which I think by and large

they will, I have confidence that they will.

But even if they don’t and to the extent other nonmission critical

systems don’t, that this stage 1 and 2 contingency planning that

we’re working very, very aggressively is automatically going to

happen, and I say that because I brought in Peter LaPorte, who

was a former emergency management director in the State of Massachusetts, who worked with Chief Braden in New York. He has

got extensive emergency management public safety experience. He

is working on the scene with us on this matter.

We also have Robert Fletcher from FEMA, who we have gotten

from Federal Emergency Management, who is working with us on

our contingency planning. We’re working very aggressively on this.

I think we have some top flight people on the problem. So I’m not

disputing GAO that there is major challenges. But I just want to

give everyone a notion of assurance that, as John Koskinen says,

that we’re managing to the problem because I believe we are.

Mrs. MORELLA. I think we have to do that and I would agree, as

I have said before, I think that we shouldn’t assume the Chicken

Little stance that the sky is falling, nor the Pollyanna stance that

there’s nothing to worry about. But I think it also links up to the

coordination.

And I guess, Mrs. Peck, are you having difficulty coordinating

with the private vendors, your subcontractors? What are you doing

about that coordination?

Mrs. PECK. We really are not having difficulties in that area.

Every day is a challenge. Every day we need to get that day’s work

fully done to go on to the next, and every day there are difficulties,

but there are not extensive coordination difficulties. Our contractors have really been powerful in the support of the District in this

project.

Mrs. MORELLA. Which then leads to end-to-end testing. Have you

done some end-to-end testing then to make sure that you are able

to connect with the entities that you’re dependent upon, which includes subcontractors, which includes business entities?

Mrs. PECK. We really—I’m sorry, I thought you meant our Y2K

contractors who have been extraordinarily supportive. Independent

supply line providers have their own independent Y2K plans, while

we have done the very—the very substantive cog effort, we are deVerDate 11-SEP-98 10:52 May 23, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00089 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\63439.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
87

pending on the assertions of those third-party suppliers to a great

extent that the compliance they assert is the compliance they actually have.

For our non-IT assets, we have done, however, even with the assertions of third-party suppliers, we have done a very substantial

amount of testing ourselves of all of the embedded chip gear that

the District has that’s mission critical.

Mrs. MORELLA. Does the chief technology officer report directly

to the Mayor?

Mayor WILLIAMS. All of our agency heads meet with me weekly.

All of my agency heads have access to me whenever they want that

access. And I’ve told Susan personally she can talk to me any time

she needs to on whatever basis she needs to, although in our city

charter, our agencies report to the Mayor through the city administrator.

Mrs. MORELLA. I want to give you an opportunity to respond. But

I want to thank you also, Mrs. Jarmon, for your concept and the

question about where this money is going and all of you as we

count down, we wish you well, we will be watching.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Ms. NORTON. Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, in order to allow those who have

the vote to be able to vote, I will be brief and confine myself to two

questions.

I think the public would like—we are using language that we

necessarily have to use by contingency planning. I think the public

might find it useful to have real world examples of contingency

plans for mission critical systems, you know, suppose 911 goes out.

You pick them. Give us some examples that make us—that would

give us some confidence that we’re going to be OK.

Mrs. PECK. I think 911 is a wonderful example. In the case

where—and the District is also in the situation where historically,

because of the lack of investment in technology, we probably operated according to contingency plans more than we would have

liked. When the automatic 911 dispatch system goes out, is not

working, the function that that system does is really to present the

call dispatchers with the address of the party who is—who is calling, to locate that caller.

When that cannot be done systematically, it is done with substantial computer printouts of every address in the District and the

operational difference in 911 between having an automated system

and a manual system is that the dispatch is approximately 30 to

60 seconds longer on the manual dispatch than it is on the systems

dispatch.

I was just handed, and if I may, Ms. Norton, I would like to alert

District residents that this Sunday in their Washington Post supplement will be a Washington, DC, home guide to emergency preparedness. It is for the District’s residents, not only a guide for

Y2K preparatory activities, but it is also a general emergency preparation guide that they can use in any emergency, and that will be

in their Washington Post supplement this Sunday.

Ms. NORTON. It will tell me if I call D.C. General and I can’t get

through, it will tell me what you all have in place, for example—

and what do you have in place, because D.C. General was supposed

88

to be one of those mission critical agencies that was not fully

ready?

Mrs. PECK. Our expectation is that the D.C. General patient care

system, which we are now remediating, will indeed be ready. But,

again, D.C. General has full patient care contingency plans in the

alternative.

I might also mention that residents can, beginning on October

1st, dial the Mayor’s central citizen information number, 727–1000,

and that number will have all the information, Y2K information,

that citizens need and will be able to respond to any Y2K questions

that they have.

Mayor WILLIAMS. I want to echo on that, Congresswoman Norton. We’ve also through our chiefs suspended our leave. We’ve also

sent out a Mayor’s order that essentially largely suspends any

leave for many of our mission critical nonpublic safety personnel.

We’re going to have fully staffed, not only with District personnel,

but with our Federal partners with connection to the regional command center that it will be up and operating days before the actual

moment of truth, January 1st.

Ms. NORTON. Finally, we’ve been talking about mission critical

systems. Has anything been done with nonmission critical systems?

Are we going to have a collapse of those systems because we’ve put

so much attention on mission critical systems?

Mrs. PECK. This is why when Mr. Davis asked me the question,

I was so assertive that we would be ready. We speak just to emphasize the priority of the 18—of the mission critical systems at

the 18 mission critical agencies, but to Mr. Horn—in responding to

Mr. Horn’s question, my response was to every system of the District, to all 370 systems of the District, and while those are—many

of those are priority 2 and priority 3 systems, the remediation, the

testing and the return to production is of all of the systems and our

report is on all of the systems, not just the mission critical.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you. That’s important to know that even

with the priorities, you think all the systems are receiving the

same attention.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Just a couple of questions before we wrap up. The District discontinued its New Year’s Eve event at the Old Post Office due at

least in part to crowd management issues. How will the new millennium celebration be implemented? Can Congress be ensured

that crowd management will be sufficient? Have we looked at this?

And will this event interfere with routine or emergency city services, and is it being taken into account in the Y2K planning?

If you would like we can give you time to answer that in writing

if you want to do it.

Mayor WILLIAMS. If I can, the short answer, Mr. Chairman, is

that we’ve been working closely with the Federal authorities as we

did, for example, with NATO, it was very, very successful working

with them on the millennium. And I don’t see that there will be

any impact on our government services, but we can get you a detailed answer in writing.

[The information referred to follows:]

89

90

91

92

93

94

95

96

97

98

99

100

101

102

103

104

105

106

107

108

109

110

111

112

113

114

115

116

117

118

119

120

121

122

123

124

125

126

127

128

129

130

131

132

133

134

135

136

137

138

139

140

141

142

143

144

145

146

147

148

149

150

151

152

153

154

155

156

157

158

159

160

161

162

163

164

165

166

167

168

169

170

171

172

173

174

175

176

177

178

Mr. DAVIS. OK. Let me just ask, does anybody want to add anything they didn’t do? Is everybody OK?

I want to congratulate Susan Peck and her team on her effort.

There’s always going to be glitches around. I want to thank the

GAO for their insights on this, everybody’s willingness to work together for our Nation’s Capital, and I appreciate it and I think it’s

going to make the big difference.

Without objection, all written statements submitted by witnesses

will be made a part of the permanent record. The record will remain open for 10 days. The subcommittee will continue to work

with all interested parties.

At our next hearing maybe we will deal with the Y3K issue.

These proceedings are closed.

[Whereupon, at 12:40 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

Æ