With the White House's deadline to eliminate the year 2000 bug from federal computer systems a year away, agencies still must fix or replace 60 percent of the government's most important systems. In its quarterly report on the government's progress on year 2000 conversion, the Office of Management and Budget warned federal agencies that the majority of work on the year 2000 problem remains to be done. The price tag for fixes continues to rise as well. However, while good progress is being made, it is not rapid enough overall.
Progress is uneven across the government.
The Social Security Administration has completed all phases of year 2000 conversion on 74 percent of its 308 mission-critical, or vital, systems. By contrast, the Education Department has not completed the work on any of its 14 mission-critical systems. Along with Education, the Energy, Health and Human Services, Labor, and Transportation Departments, and the Agency for International Development, were all chided by OMB for their slow progress. Several departments are having trouble keeping their sub-agencies up to speed. OMB said the Treasury Department needs to push the Financial Management Service and the U.S. Mint harder, Commerce has to get the ball rolling faster at the Patent and Trademark Office and the Census Bureau, and Transportation is having problems with several of its bureaus.