Rest easy, the Office of Personnel Management said Wednesday, your benefits are safe from the Y2K bug. I'm able to guarantee to you that OPM operations will continue well beyond the year 2000. OPM has completed Y2K fixes on the computer systems that run federal hiring processes, retirement programs, health benefits, life insurance and the Combined Federal Campaign. Janet Barnes, OPM's chief information officer, said minor glitches were caught and fixed during Y2K tests. For example, the Treasury Department's Financial Management Service processes federal employees' pay checks and disburses checks to retirees.
Most employees receive their checks by direct deposit.
Before they get paid, their agencies process their pay checks through 74 finance centers, which forward the information to the Financial Management Service. Those 45 handle 75 percent of federal employees' pay. The remaining 29 centers will complete Y2K work by the end of summer, said Connie Craig, chief information officer at the Financial Management Service. Craig said the service has focused much of its energy on ensuring Social Security and veterans' payment systems are Y2K compliant, but federal employees haven't been forgotten. The Defense Finance and Accounting Service, which handles pay checks for military personnel and retirees, as well as Defense civilian employees, has reported that its payment systems are Y2K compliant as well.