Anthony
Williams for Mayor

Year 2000 Compliance for the D.C. Government

BACKGROUND

At beginning of the new term of the Mayor in the District of Columbia, we will also be approaching a new millennium. The Year 2000 (Y2K) will bring great opportunities and challenges. One of the most immediate challenges will be to ensure Y2K compliance of all of our accounting and financial systems and also all hardware and software systems that operate in the District of Columbia. Y2K compliance will also be required for the delivery of almost all public services in the District of Columbia Government. This will include:

• issuing of checks to individuals on public assistance;
• issuing electronic benefits to public assistance recipients;
• selling lottery tickets;
• providing proper real estate and income tax assessments to the DC citizens;
• issuance of license plates and driver's licenses, and even the operation of telephones and elevators in District Buildings and escalators on the Metro System.

Owing to the age of many of the computer systems in the DC Government (many system dating back to the early and mid 1970s), state of the art information technology will be required in almost all of the city agencies.

In addition, vital information and data for the operation of the DC Government currently resides on legacy computer systems. The migration of the data and information to updated workstations will require an experienced staff in database management and migration, the middleware solutions to successfully migrate existing data systems and funding to support the purchase of new hardware and software to modernize information systems in the DC Government. No real estimates have yet been done on the costs for Y2K compliance, but the closer we get to the new century or Year 2000, the more expensive this task of Y2K compliance will become.

PROPOSED REMEDIES/SOLUTIONS

1. In order to prevent a storm of litigation over the Year 2000 crisis, we will assemble a Y2K committee to prepare a needs assessment for every agency in the DC Government that has yet to devise one and identify specific challenges and develop proposals and methods to ensure Y2K compliance for all of the District's Agencies.
2. There has already been a survey of all of the Information Systems that are currently in use in the DC Government. For the most part, a large number of the systems are outdated and need to be replaced. In addition, the procurement methods in the past allowed for each agency to purchase equipment of its choice without any regards for compatibility to other equipment or how this equipment would communicate with other systems. As Mayor, I will work with the Chief Technology Officer and the Procurement Officer to ensure that there are standards established in the purchasing of all office equipment and information technology systems. By necessity, all new systems will be Y2K compliant. In fact, as CFO, I was responsible for implementing the District of Columbia's new Financial Management System, which is Y2K compliant.
3. We will also need to work closely with the federal agencies in getting our systems Y2K compliant since many of the governmental agencies in the District mirror those in the federal sector. Our forms and procedures need to be done in concert with them. On the other hand, there may also need to be some consolidation of agencies' services as we modernize.