October 29, 1999 Web posted at: 9:50 a.m. EDT (1350 GMT) by John Monroe

From...

INDIANAPOLIS (IDG) -- As one state official put it, the last phase of the Year 2000 challenge is not technology but psychology.

State and federal officials, speaking here at The National Association of State Information Resource Executives 1999 annual conference, agreed that most state governments have finished fixing and testing their systems for Year 2000 compliance, but their jobs are not finished until they get the message out to their citizens.

"You can fix a computer, you can upgrade software, but. . .you cannot prescribe human emotion," said Wisconsin State Sen. Bob Jauch, speaking as part of a Year 2000 panel. "It is important that state governments keep the public informed on what government has done," said Jauch, who for the past year has served as chairman of the National Conference of State Legislatures' Year 2000 Subcommittee.

The public relations effort is critical because most attention is being given to speculation about the potentially disastrous ramifications of the Year 2000 problem. Several speakers cited an upcoming made-for-TV disaster movie about Year 2000 as an example of the kind of image that government must counter with concrete information.

"This is no longer a technology problem -- it is a political problem and an outreach problem," said Michael Jacobs, chief technology advisor on the California State Assembly Year 2000 Conversion Committee.

For example, a number of public utilities announced that they have finished their Year 2000 work, Jacobs said. But it appears that many people still worry about losing electricity after the Jan. 1 rollover. "In that context, the utilities are not done with Y2K," he said.

The problem becomes critical in such areas as banking, where lack of public confidence -- resulting in large amounts of money being withdrawn at year's end -- could precipitate a financial crisis even if no computers fail, the speakers said. At the same time, state governments must set realistic expectations about what problems might occur, or else they lose credibility.

MORE COMPUTING INTELLIGENCE
	IDG.net home page
Civic.com home page
Top 10 Y2K fixes for your PC
After midnight
Do you have a backup plan for your Y2K backup plan?

In some cases, a strong outreach effort could help head off problems in areas where a government has no control, said Steven Henderson, Nebraska's Year 2000 project manager. For example, while the government cannot ensure that every small business is Year 2000-compliant, a strong outreach effort can encourage people to act on their own, he said.