Social Security Administration

Overall, the Social Security Administration (SSA) showed a strong and consistent commitment to addressing concerns about its Year 2000 program. The agency completed all of the critical tasks needed to ensure its readiness before the date change at the turn of the century and experienced only minor problems during the rollover weekend. SSA also reported that its systems processed data without incident during the February 29 leap year date, another potential source of disruptions. Like other organizations, however, SSA must still consider the possibility that additional challenges arising from the Year 2000 issue could arise.

GAO noted that: (1) overall, SSA demonstrated a strong and consistent commitment to addressing identified concerns about its year 2000 program; (2) the agency completed all of the critical tasks involved in ensuring its readiness prior to the change of century and experienced only minor problems during the rollover weekend; (3) for those problems that did occur, SSA now reports that all have been mitigated by correcting the systems involved; (4) moreover, according to SSA, none of the problems encountered during the rollover weekend adversely affected its ability to serve the public; (5) SSA further reported that its systems processed data without incident during the February 29 leap year date, another potential date for disruptions; (6) like other organizations, SSA must still consider the possibility that additional challenges associated with the year 2000 could occur; (7) there may continue to be minor problems along the way as organizations process data and transactions in the future, such as during quarterly, end-of-year, or other critical periods; (8) while SSA's success so far is a very positive indicator that any potential hurdles will also be overcome, the agency nonetheless must continue its diligence in anticipating and responding to any problems that occur; (9) further, it will be especially important for SSA to consider how practices that it applied in addressing the year 2000 problem can now be used to help ensure the effective management of its broader information technology program; and (10) SSA agreed that such action should be taken, and the Commissioner stated that the agency had already begun to apply lessons learned from its year 2000 experiences.

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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