Management Challenges of Y2K
     Money almost couldn't be an issue in a problem where those who failed to fix it risked a complete shut-down of their state. But the Y2K problem did trouble many in terms of logistics. As Tom Unruh of the Economic and Commerce Policy Studies Division at the National Governors' Association Center for Best Practices explained, the real challenge for states wasn't fixing the code, it was determining how to handle the vast amounts of code to be fixed.
     "One of the interesting things of Y2K is that it's a management challenge," Unruh said. "The technical issues are fairly straightforward. It's a matter of organizing to get the work done."
     But even despite the many hurdles, states were able to come through with success. On Jan. 3, as most employees returned to work, many held their breaths again, wondering if the first workday of the new year would trigger glitches. As that didn't occur, states became more confident in touting complete victory over the Y2K bug.
     Benzen said that on Monday, 42 states reported in for a teleconference on the issue with presidential Y2K czar, John Koskinen. Nobody reported any serious problems at all, he said. And throughout the country, state Y2K coordinators repeated a similar refrain, happily celebrating the quiet date changeover.

No News Is Good News
     "Nothing happened, which is great news," said John Pribek, the coordinator of Wisconsin's Governor's Blue Ribbon Commission on Year 2000 Preparedness. "It's gone as wonderfully as it would be expected. It's gone even better than we'd ever dreamed of."
     Wisconsin had created a stir in the beginning of 1999 with a proposal that would have put the National Guard on active alert during the changeover. That plan was not in use and the guard was not activated, although if problems had occurred they could have been easily mobilized, Pribek said.
     Connecticut was battling PR problems of its own. It was trying to reverse perception that it wasn't ready to take on the bug. The last published report on the topic by the Office of Management and Budget "gave an inaccurate picture" of the state's readiness, said Nuala Ford, a spokeswoman for the CIO's office. Connecticut was one state of eight listed as lagging behind on some of the 10 systems that administer federally-funded programs such as child welfare, nutrition and Medicaid. Ford said that after spending $115 million to remediate 100,000 computer problems and 74 million lines of code, the state was ready by New Year's Eve.
     "Y2K was initially an obstacle but it turned into a tremendous opportunity," she said.
     With so much attention being paid to computer operations, many states were able to find ways to streamline their systems for the future. Ford explained that Connecticut had 13 separate systems that tracked professional licensing at the Department of Public Health, but that in the process of fixing Y2K problems, those were replaced with one "supersystem" that handles all licensing.

From Obstacle To Opportunity
     Those examples are prevalent, and lead the states toward their next technology goals of promoting e-government and paperless work environments. Now that they can reallocate resources once spent fixing Y2K errors, the new battle will be getting state agencies online and ready to serve the public in ways similar to the new e-commerce models.
     "Never at any point in state history has there been as many demands to bring technology to bear in the state," Ford said. "We're being called on to bring in technology as a magic bullet to solve problems within state agencies and make their jobs easier or allow them to do things they weren't able to do."
     Connecticut is working on integrating its criminal justice information system to make it easier to track people as they move through the system. The state is also vamping up its licensing and registration programs to be fully online over the coming year.
     "A lot of work we'd done for Y2K put us in a position to do this year," said Rock Regan, Connecticut's CIO. He added that by replacing infrastructure and applications that should have been retired long ago, they were able to replace systems and bring them to a level of technology that will make it easier to go fully online.
     That trend will be repeated nationwide, predicted Benzen, the immediate past president of the National Association of State Information Resource Executives. In the next year, Benzen said state governments will be "making the most noise" about using technology to interact with the public.
     "If you look at what business is doing in terms of how it interacts with customers, government will be doing identical things in parallel," he said.
- by Stephanie Lash