http://www.hud.gov/cio/year2000/rollover/y2koknew.html

no major y2k-related computer glitches at hud during first business week of 2000, "business as usual" is the rule Everyone can breath a sigh of relief now that HUD's first Y2K hurdle has passed. The Department of Housing and Urban Developments computer systems have entered the first week of the new century with no major disruptions to achieving HUDs mission. This first week of operations in the new year has been "business as usual" for HUDs constituents, business partners, and employees.

The next Y2K hurdles where HUD will be especially vigilant, include:

Month-end processing, Leap year rollover on February 29-March 1st, and The first quarterly processing at the end of March.

Several successful transactions during the past week have indicated that the millennium rollover has brought about no significant Y2K problems to carrying out HUDs mission:

HUD's Community Development Block Grants Program is functioning normally. All States are operational, and the full flow of information between the Agency and the States is functioning without incident. During the New Year's weekend, forty-four volunteer Community Development Block Grant Grantees successfully tested draw-downs via the Integrated Disbursement Information System (IDIS); indicating that these systems are ready for business in the new century. Over 3000 Public Housing Agencies, serving approximately 1,100,000 families across the nation, continue to receive and administer subsidies and operating funds from HUD during the first week of 2000. Twenty large Public Housing Authorities were contacted during the rollover weekend by HUD; all reported business as usual. HUD's Section 8 Rental Assistance Program continues to report "Green." The Section 8 business function is operating normally, with all Section 8 project based and 40,000 owner/agent recipients receiving subsidies. Ginnie Mae (GNMA) made a successful transition into the year 2000 with no problems as a result of the date change. All Ginnie Mae systems and business partner systems that support Ginnie Mae business processes are fully operational. Ginnie Mae, which approves the issue of mortgage backed securities by its business partners, has not been advised of any problems in the transition to the Year 2000 from any of the more than 90,000 issuers of GNMA mortgage backed securities. HUD personnel and payroll update transactions will occur as normal with the National Finance Center (NFC); ensuring no problems with HUD personnel and payroll processing. In addition to overall mission success, HUD has experienced a few minor glitches, some Y2K-related and some not. However, all were minor and did not affect HUDs ability to continue conducting it business.

A mainframe laser printer produced the date as "1900" on a report separator page. This error did not affect actual content of the printed reports. The incident had minor impact, and early in the week was temporarily corrected with a local fix to the software. The problem was fixed permanently with a new software release from the vendor later in the week. During the New Year's weekend, minor problems surfaced during Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) retrieval of files; these problems were repaired, tested, and released into production on Sunday January 2, 2000. On Saturday, January 1st, users attempting to use the mortgage termination function in FHA Connection received an incorrect date and an error message and users were temporarily unable to use this particular function. A fix was quickly released to production for this Year 2000 related error. By Monday, January 3, 2000, over 100 transactions had come in from lenders, verifying correct operation of this function. HUDs work since 1996, including the creation of Business Process Continuity and Contingency Plans and Y2K Day One plans prepared HUD so well that the millennium rollover was relatively quiet and uneventful. However, we will continue to monitor our computer systems throughout the coming month and during the leap-year rollover at the end of February. This is a Year 2000 Readiness Disclosure as defined in PL 105-271, Year 2000 Information and Readiness Disclosure Act. The information contained in this United States Department of Housing and Urban Development document is based on information available as of the date of publication and is subject to change.

As Of January 7, 2000

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), January 22, 2000