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by Thomas Hoffman

NEWS U.N.'s millennium man battles Y2K Clinton appeals for help on Year 2000 computer problem Arthur C. Clarke upset over 2000 'millennium' Clinton: Y2K bug won't affect Social Security payments FEATURES 'Ulysses' voted book for millennium Paris polishes up for millennium celebrations Forget the Y2K computer bug -- what about the champagne? SPECIALS CNN.com Special: The Year 2000 Bug

(IDG) -- Come Jan. 1, 2000, will prison security systems fail, allowing inmates to escape? Probably not -- but even if systems lapse, manual contingency plans and extra guards should keep the cons behind bars, says Rod Coggin, director of the Georgia Department of Corrections' Office of Information Technology. Coggin, 50, spoke recently with Computerworld senior editor Thomas Hoffman about these and other prison year 2000 challenges.

Q: What are your biggest year 2000 issues?

A: What has us most concerned are the embedded systems in security systems, process control systems, etc. There could be some life-threatening circumstances. Gates not opening properly could be one. If the fire alarm systems didn't work, I don't know what the fire marshal would do.

Q: How big a risk are the security systems?

A: It's not as complicated as air traffic control. It's just the discomfort factor [of not knowing if they will function properly].

The perimeter [security] systems were built in the mid-'90s. Holding the perimeter is very important, but I think we're in pretty good shape there. We haven't manned our towers for a number of years, but we may have to man a few towers [at night] as a backup.

Some of our locking systems are older, but we've got manual keys we can use to override the systems in case there are any problems. We may have to lower the occupancy [of some of our prisons]. We don't want to put any staff or inmates at risk.

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Q: What year 2000 services is Unisys Corp. providing?

A: Unisys is handling the remediation on our Offender Tracking Information System [OTIS] and our food service system, which cover more than 10 million combined lines of Cobol code. Dates are significant in corrections -- release dates, sentencing dates, statistical forecasting, court dates and so forth. OTIS has been around since the late '70s. It's a very old system.

Unisys is also assisting us with PC inventory and evaluating our embedded systems.

Q: What's the worst-case scenario if OTIS fails?

A: Release orders are generated by the computer. I'm not saying that there would be massive releases [of prisoners] at once, but there could be some early releases that are mistakes. For that matter, some people could be kept [imprisoned] longer by mistake.

Q: What else must be looked at?

A: We also have a PC-based system that runs our inmate commissary. Don't think for a minute that can't be Y2K-compliant. Believe me, if the inmates couldn't get their free privileges for a period of time, the tensions would rise. Inmates could probably make things rough if they couldn't access their personal spending accounts.