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The state of Michigan says 29% of the state's systems are compliant.
Notice that Ottawa County got started in 1992. It spent $24,000, total, over the 5-year period on programming. This isn't much. The county replaced all of its computers. Presumably, they went to microcomputers. The problem is, they can't get Los Angeles County and similar giants compliant unless they began a lot earlier than 1992 and were able to replace their computer systems. They didn't.
This appeared in the Holland SENTINEL (Dec. 8).
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Formal strategies for tackling the problem at a state level started last year.
According to an assessment of the state's readiness released this summer, 29 percent of the state's computer applications are ready for 2000 and 11 percent are in the process. The state allocated $55 million in this year's budget to take care of computer applications that aren't ready, but that doesn't include other technologies that may be affected, such as personal computers and phone systems. . . .
[Jim] Mankoski said he started brainstorming in the late 1980s about how to solve the problem for Ottawa County. In 1992, the county adopted a five-year plan to replace most of the computer hardware throughout the county offices and rewrite code on all 10,000 programs used to run operations.
Mankoski estimates $24,000 has been spent internally to have the county's programmers fix the problem over the last five years. He said they'll perform spot checks over the next two years and analyze any new programs they use, but otherwise they're ready.
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