Year 2000 Computing Challenge

The FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System is a computer system that, in concert with other FBI and state-run systems, is used to do presale background checks on persons seeking to buy firearms. This report, which summarizes the information presented by GAO at a congressional briefing, evaluates the FBI's efforts to make the system Year 2000 compliant. GAO also makes recommendations designed to strengthen the Year 2000 readiness of the nation's firearm presale background check program.

GAO noted that: (1) two of the most critical phases of the year 2000 readiness process are testing and contingency planning; (2) testing is essential to providing reasonable assurance that new or modified systems process dates correctly and will not jeopardize an organization's ability to perform core business operations after the millennium; (3) contingency planning is needed to mitigate the impact on core business operations of unexpected internal and uncontrollable external year 2000-induced system failures; (4) the FBI reported to the Office of Management and Budget in August 1999 that NICS was year 2000 compliant; (5) however, at that time, the FBI did not have a basis for determining system compliance because it had yet to complete system acceptance testing; (6) this testing verifies that an entire system, including application software, system software, and hardware, performs as intended and thus, is a prerequisite to determining system compliance; (7) however, the FBI has defined controls and processes that are consistent with GAO's year 2000 test guidance for effectively managing system acceptance tests; (8) the FBI does not plan to end-to-end test the entire set of interrelated FBI and state systems, including NICS, that are needed to conduct firearm presale background checks, citing a lack of time remaining before the century date change; (9) this conclusion is reasonable, however the FBI is not pursuing alternative, less time-demanding means to minimizing the risks associated with forgoing end-to-end tests with all of its business partners; (10) also, the FBI's draft NICS' year 2000 contingency plan is missing elements important to ensuring the continuity of instant background check operations; (11) the plan does not define the process for training contingency teams on workaround procedures; (12) further, FBI officials stated that they do not plan to test NICS' contingency plan; and (13) without taking these and other steps, the FBI is unnecessarily increasing the risk that it will not be able to perform instant background checks on prospective firearm buyers' eligibility in the year 2000.

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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