U.S. Declares Y2K Rollover a Success

WASHINGTON —  While keeping a cautious eye open for glitches as the nation returns for its first business day of the new year, federal officials said Sunday that the rollover to Year 2000 is “a major managerial accomplishment,” well worth the effort and billions of dollars spent on it.

John Koskinen, chairman of the President’s Council on Year 2000 Conversion, told reporters that no major problems had been reported across the nation and in the developed world over the weekend.

However, he cautioned that some minor disruptions could occur as the nation’s workers return to their jobs today, particularly in small businesses.

“Most of the businesses at risk employ five or fewer people,” he said. “They have computers and software programs for communications and financial management. Many of them communicate with their customers by voice mail. Those systems are at risk of failure, but not all of them will fail.”

But, he added, the few firms that will encounter problems could have avoided any potential disruptions if they had checked their systems. “A lot of people will not have done that,” Koskinen said. “It’s not that they don’t know about the problem, but they’ve chosen to take a wait-and-see attitude and then fix any problems.”

At any rate, he said, “it will not have an economic impact on the American economy,” even if it makes some businesses and their customers unhappy.

The Y2K command center, which is monitoring all federal government operations during the opening weeks of the new year, has received scattered reports of minor snafus, such as malfunctions in the card-scanning equipment used to unlock some government buildings and failure of software used by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to register dealers.

Reports from the transportation sector, financial markets and federal systems suggested nothing that would prevent business as usual today.

“Monday is an important day,” Koskinen said. “We do not expect any major, significant problems. Though there may be some minor glitches, we have no reports or indications of minor problems.”

In fact, Koskinen said the federal government is so pleased with the lack of problems, officials are considering scaling back their monitoring operations or shutting them down sooner than they had anticipated.

As an indication of how well things were going, Koskinen said several business leaders in private industry declined his invitation to join him at the news conference to tell reporters what might have happened if they hadn’t been prepared for the rollover.

“Several reminded us that it’s Sunday,” he said. “They said if they really had some news, they would have elected to come.”

Koskinen summarized the overall effort as such a “great success” that it has prompted some critics to call the Y2K preparations overblown. “We did it too well,” he said jokingly. “We made it look too easy. We should have had a control group out there failing.”