Regardless of the scenario, all problems encountered must be addressed either with in-house resources, qualified external resources or more likely a combination of both. The competitive procurement process takes time. If state or local governments are in the early stages of developing procurements for Y2K remediation, they are in trouble. Alternatively these governments organizations could use the GSA schedule, avoid the precious administration time, cost, and resources they don't have at this late stage in the game. When a Y2K problem occurs or is anticipated and must be avoided, quick access to appropriate vendors must be an absolute given, not a question mark.
Convenience goes hand in hand with speed.
The potential for quick response from contracted services is of little value if the front-end process to gain contract access is made laborious and confusing by federal restrictions and paperwork. GSA must keep its process simple for its potential state and local buyers just as it has for federal customer base. Equally important, a streamlined approach for GSA contract usage must also be supported by the procurement groups representing state and local buyers. Y2K compliance expenditures, for the most part, were not investments in upgraded capabilities or functionality, we simply restored broken systems to a working state. Since Y2K expenditures are predominantly viewed as a maintenance expenses rather than capability enhancing investments, funding efforts to achieve compliance or quick response fixes have been especially painful.