States Enjoy Bugless Entry Into Fiscal Y2K

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Hopefully Dr. North's Dog Has Stop Peeing On His Power Supply

FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY

States Enjoy Bugless Entry Into Fiscal Y2K

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The switchover to fiscal 2000 Thursday appears to have arrived virtually free of Year 2000 bugs, government officials said Thursday.

``Nobody has had any meltdown,'' Gloria Timmer, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers, said.

Concerns had been raised, six months ahead of the calendar's switch to 2000, because 46 states and many local governments Thursday began fiscal year 2000.

Technicians were on hand in case the date triggered any lurking millennium bugs not yet discovered by months of reprogramming and testing.

But the budget officers group said it surveyed 15 states, including New Jersey, Ohio, Missouri, North Carolina and Virginia, and found everything running smoothly.

``It's a little soon to know for sure, but it looks good,'' Timmer said.

Officials in Illinois and Kansas told Reuters they would not have a good reading on computer performance until late Thursday.

Tom Rubel, who has been watching the Y2K issue for the National Governors Association, said states were reporting things were running normally as they began processing bills, payrolls and other programs against fiscal 2000 appropriations.

Many computers were programmed to recognize only the last two digits of the year, and state and local governments have spent millions of dollars to replace, repair and test their systems so they will not confuse dates in 2000 with 1900.



-- Sista In 'Da Hood (Sista@Da.Hood), July 05, 1999

Answers

Hi Norm- Welcome back.....

-- farmer (hillsidefarm@drbs.net), July 05, 1999.

Oh no, it looks like Norm died and was reincarnated as a black woman. Oh well.

-- Puzzled (death@couldntKeep.himAway), July 05, 1999.

TROLL ALERT!!/b> Do Not Feed the Trolls. This disguise is so obvious, it makes me laugh.

-- Sandmann (Sandmann@alasbab.com), July 05, 1999.

That should be reportedly almost bugless entry into Fiscal Year 2000. The Jo Anne Effect does exist. The kind of problems the JAE causes in accounting software, though, doesn't affect manufacturing or distribution and are rarely reported.

[Fair Use: For Educational/Research Purposes Only]

[Added Bold Emphasis Mine]

Few computer snags reported in major Y2K test

By Ross Kerber and Heather Kamins, Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent, 07/02/99

Massachusetts state computers suffered a few glitches yesterday as fiscal year 2000 got under way, but officials said they remain comfortable with the progress of work to overcome the software problem known as the Y2K bug.

The start of the new fiscal year in Massachusetts and 45 other states yesterday was seen as a key test of progress in work to protect against disruptions come Jan. 1, 2000.

But the date change seemed to go unnoticed in most states and many municipal agencies.

In Boston, information systems director Bill Hannon said city computers worked without a hitch despite a new software package that had just been installed.

''We fired it up at 8 a.m. and it's been fine,'' Hannon said. Cambridge and Quincy city officials also reported smooth operations, and errors seemed rare nationwide as well.

''Nobody had any issues at all, that I know of,'' said Gloria Timmer, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers, which surveyed many members yesterday afternoon. ''It was a good sign'' that most state remediation plans are on track, she said.

The so-called Y2K problem relates to software applications that use only the last two digits of each year to keep track of the date. Left unrepaired, such programs might misinterpret the last two digits of Jan. 1, 2000, and cause systems to malfunction or shut down.

To prevent that outcome, Massachusetts state agencies are spending $103 million to upgrade programs. Mostly those efforts prevented major problems yesterday, said Val Asbedian, an official in the state's division of information technology who is monitoring Y2K preparations.

But exceptions were discovered at a state computing center in Chelsea, Asbedian said. One application used to track legislative action on a mainframe apparently misinterpreted the ''00'' of the new fiscal year as a previous date. In a second case, Asbedian said, a mainframe program wasn't able to allocate costs properly because of the unfamiliar year.

Asbedian said he couldn't provide more specific descriptions of the problems, but said they were quickly spotted and repaired.

The glitches were troublesome because they appeared in large mainframe applications that had already been certified as ''Y2K- compliant,'' meaning they were already thought to be prepared for the date change.

But Asbedian said he was satisfied the two problems didn't indicate broader weaknesses in the state's remediation work.

This story ran on page C2 of the Boston Globe on 07/02/99.

) Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.

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-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), July 05, 1999.


See the following thread for more info on the Jo Anne Effect, accounting software and fiscal year rollovers:

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00122f

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), July 05, 1999.



sista=norm

O.J.

Not guilty!! Let's golf.

-- OJ (OJSimpson@jailhouse.com), July 05, 1999.


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