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A July 7 story in INFORMATIONWEEK says that seven states are now claiming 2000-compliance for their financial management systems: Illinois, Wyoming, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Missouri, and Oklahoma.
Anyone who takes such PR flak seriously should spend some time reading California's 1997/98 funding request. It is a detailed document that includes these omninous words: "This process is in effect for the 1997/98 Fiscal Year only and will be used by state entities to justify funding requests from the $50 million Y2k fund. The establishment of future special funds for Y2k activities for fiscal years 1998-1999 and 1999-2000 is unknown at this time."
In short, they don't know where the money will come from. Meanwhile, the existing $50 million budget is way too low.
You can get a link to this document under this title: "California: Nowhere Near Compliant."
If these PR handouts' claims are correct, then one aspect of the states' problems has been solved on an internal basis in seven states. Of course, I don't believe they are correct. But even if they are, the question is: Will each fix prove to be in conformity to all other supposedly compliant computers with which the financial management computer shares data? That is, will all other systems with which this computer interacts also be compliant in just the same way? If not, what happens to the fixed computer's data and operations? Will they be corrupted?
Next, what happens to its interaction with noncompliant computers? Does it recognize and immediately shut out all noncompliant computers? If it does, what happens to state systems as systems? How do the systems survive?
It is not sufficient to fix one component of a system.
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