IRS Dispatches Software Police
Year 2000 Approaches IRS Dispatches Software Police By Neil Munro Can top government officials trust agency-supplied data that shows progress in wiping out the year 2000 flaw in government computers? John Eisele photo IRS CIO Arthur Gross "The answer is that we don't know and we don't trust the data," s
Year 2000 Approaches
IRS Dispatches Software Police
By Neil MunroCan top government officials trust agency-supplied data that shows progress in wiping out the year 2000 flaw in government computers?
John Eisele photo IRS CIO Arthur Gross |
The widespread year 2000 software flaw, which threatens to tangle tax collection and tax returns in 2000, exists because software often only labels data with the last two digits of each calendar year. Thus data from 2001 would be labeled with "01" - and could be mistakenly interpreted by the computer as data from 1901.
Checking Year 2000 Repairs |
IRS officials are:
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To fix its problem, the IRS is using 550 IRS employees and 250 contractor-supplied experts. "It's absolutely a massive effort," which is estimated to cost $850 million, Gross said. Before 1996, the IRS estimated the repair cost at roughly $20 million.
So far, the IRS has completed 52 percent of its software repair work, but has only completed 22 percent of needed tests and has only deployed 4 percent of software scheduled for repair.
To chart the agency's progress, Gross has color-coded work on each of the 95,000 components: Green-coded work is within 5 percent of their schedules, amber-coded work is up to 15 percent behind, while red-coded work is more than 15 percent behind schedule, he said.
So far, 85 percent of the agency's work programs are coded green, while 14 percent are amber and only 1 percent is red, said Gross. "But I'm skeptical," he said.
"Not just the IRS, but every company needs an internal certification program, a year 2000 police if you will, to verify that the software is operating as advertised," said Cohen.
Too many top executives are led astray by middle managers "who fail to report on the true status of the situation, or who might put a more positive spin on the situation," said Cohen.
A 1996 survey of 173 executives showed a wide gap between corporate chief information officers and their middle managers in terms of estimating year 2000 repair costs, said Leon Kappelman, an associate professor at the University of North Texas, Denton, Texas. Middle managers pegged the repair costs 50 percent higher than the CIOs, said Kappelman, who helped organize the study for the Chicago-based Society for Information Management.
Another measure being taken by Gross is a modification to the General Accounting Office's five-step year 2000 repair manual. The modification adds an extra step intended to verify that planned fixes at IRS offices throughout the United States actually work and are in use, he said.
The checks will "certify that renovations have been made and have been made properly," he said. This certification will be completed after the agency has completed end-to-end testing of its repaired software, due to start in January 1999, he said.
In the near term, the IRS is using outside contractors to perform "regression testing" in which all software, including software that did not need a year 2000 fix, is checked to ensure that it does not fall victim to the year 2000 problem, said Gross. Also, the IRS is developing contingency plans to mitigate any problems that are not corrected in time, he said.
One question that remains unanswered is Gross' political clout inside the IRS, which is needed to ensure that the repaired software is used by the IRS' satellite offices, said the congressional staff member.
To get that clout, the staffer said, Gross will need top-level support, especially from Charles Rossotti, now chairman of American Management Systems, Fairfax, Va., who has been nominated as the next IRS commissioner by President Bill Clinton.
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