Home » Technology » Software Re-engineering » FEDERAL AGENCIES REDEFINE “MISSION-CRITICAL”

FEDERAL AGENCIES REDEFINE “MISSION-CRITICAL”

© Faisal Bin Bashir

The number of Y2K "mission-critical" systems as defined by the US government has dropped from about 9,000 to 6,000, but oversight bodies in both the Congress and the General Accounting Office say there is no reason to believe agencies are eliminating vital systems from their lists simply to meet deadlines.

"We looked at this issue in the past and found no evidence they were lying," said Russell George, staff director and chief counsel for the House Subcommittee on Government Management, Information, and Technology. "As departments review their systems, they realized some were redundant or obsolete."

George said Joel Willemssen, the director of the GAO's Civil Agencies Infor-mation Systems office, testified before the committee on 13 April and said the agencies were not misleading anyone when reducing the number of critical systems.

Linda Lambert, the GAO information systems office's assistant director, said that while the total number of systems has been reduced, individual agencies have also added systems to the mission-critical list. For example, the Department of Energy raised its total of such systems to 420 from 261 in May 1997, while the Department of Justice raised its mission-critical tally from 190 to 221.

Y2K Resources

http://www.senate.gov/~y2k: The US Senate's up-to-date Y2K page includes hearing testimony from leaders of the food, legal, and shipping industries.

http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/SSG/yk04743e.h... Industry Canada's site includes global and industry links.

http://www.microtech.doe.gov/y2k/: The US Department of Energy's Microtechnology Support Site covers desktops to networks and features comprehensive links.

http://www.sysmod.com/y2ksprds.htm: Systems Modelling Managing Director Patrick O'Beirne's page discusses Y2K compliance in popular spreadsheets, with vendor links and tips.

http://info.med.yale.edu/computing/year2... Yale Medical School's spreadsheet page features links to wizards that change and migrate dates where necessary.

Reference Y2K in Brief, IEEE Computer Magazine.

The copyright of the article FEDERAL AGENCIES REDEFINE “MISSION-CRITICAL” in Software Re-engineering is owned by . Permission to republish FEDERAL AGENCIES REDEFINE “MISSION-CRITICAL” in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.