Year 2000 Computing Crisis

The State Department has taken many positive steps to increase awareness, promote sharing of information, and encourage its bureaus to make Year 2000 remediation efforts a high priority. However, State's progress in responding to the problem has been slow. For example, of the 40 systems that State identified as mission critical and needing either converting or replacement, only 17--about 42.5 percent--have completed renovation. More importantly, until recently, State's Year 2000 effort lacked a mission-based perspective. That is, it had not determined its core business functions or linked these functions to its mission or to the support systems necessary to conduct these operations. Because the Year 2000 problem is primarily a business problem, agencies need to take a business perspective--identifying their core business areas and processes and assessing the impact of system failures. Until it takes these steps, State will not be in a good position to prioritize its systems for the purposes of correction or developing contingency plans that focus on the continuity of operations. Finally, State has not been managing the identification and correction of its interfaces effectively. As a result, State has increased the chance that Year 2000 errors will be propagated from one organization's systems to another's.

GAO noted that: (1) State has taken many positive actions to increase awareness, promote sharing of information, and encourage its bureaus to make year 2000 remediation efforts a high priority; (2) however, State's progress in responding to the problem has been slow; (3) for example, of the 40 systems that State identified as mission critical and needing either converting or replacing, only 17 (42.5 percent) have completed renovation; (4) more importantly, until recently, State's year 2000 effort lacked a mission-based perspective, that is, it had not determined its core business functions or linked these functions to its mission or to the support systems necessary to conduct these operations; (5) because the year 2000 problem is primarily a business problem, agencies need to take a business perspective in all aspects of it; that is, they should identify their core business areas and processes and assess the impact of system failures; (6) until it takes these steps, State will not have a good basis for prioritizing its systems for the purposes of correction or developing contingency plans that focus on the continuity of operations; (7) in responding to GAO's draft report, State noted that it has recently determined its core business functions and linked these functions to its mission; (8) it has not yet linked its core business functions to support systems necessary to conduct these operations; (9) State has not been managing the identification and correction of its interfaces effectively; (10) specifically, it is still identifying its interfaces, even though this task should have been completed in the assessment phase, and it has developed written agreements with data exchange partners for only a small portion of its systems; and (11) as a result, State has increased the risk that year 2000 errors will be propagated from one organization's systems to another's.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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