DATE: Thursday, October 16, 1997            TAG: 9710160500

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B11  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: RICHMOND                          LENGTH:   53 lines

RESETTING STATE'S COMPUTER CLOCKS ESTIMATED TO COST $83.7 MILLION

The state will have to reset the clocks on its myriad computer systems before Jan. 1, 2000, a job that will cost taxpayers up to $83.7 million, consultants told the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission.

Unless the software that tells time on the state's computers is reworked by the year 2000, the machines that keep state government running could either shut down or begin spewing garbage.

The ``year 2000 problem'' is worldwide, but Virginia can avoid the predicament, Joseph Mimms of the Gartner Group, a technology research firm in Stamford, Conn., told the commission Tuesday.

``You have a lot of different kind of computers. But your 2000 problem is utterly manageable. It can be addressed,'' Mimms said.

The checklist for the detailed, technical work is extensive. One full-time technician working alone would need 539.7 years to reset the state's computer clocks, the Gartner Group estimated.

State officials have not decided on a comprehensive plan to fix the year 2000 problem. When Virginia devises a plan, the state will find itself competing with other governments and industry for skilled computer workers to carry it out.

The problem began when the early writers of computer code took a shortcut to save computer memory. Code writers omitted the first two numbers of a date - meaning that 1997, for example, reads as 97. But beginning at 12:01 on New Year's morning of 2000, computers will read the code as 00, and interpret it as 1900.

As a result, programs that use dates to perform calculations, comparisons or sorting may generate errors when working with years after 1999.

Hudnall R. Croasdale, director of the state Council on Information Management, said state agencies must ask for money to fix the problem when they submit their budget requests Oct. 24.

The Gartner Group said it will cost $80 million to $83.7 million to reconfigure the computer systems for the 29 state agencies and the state's colleges.

Virginia uses a variety of computer systems, including nine mainframes, 75 midrange computers and 200 smaller servers, or department computers, with a staggering mix of applications, processing capabilities and vintages. State officials said some agencies are likely to ask for replacement systems instead of resetting old systems.

Hudnall said the first computer systems to be fixed are those that affect state residents directly, such as those used for collecting taxes or writing checks to state employees and welfare recipients.

Certain Department of Corrections computers have a priority status because of prisoner rights guaranteed by the state Constitution, he said.

The 1998 General Assembly, which convenes in January, will be asked for money to fund that conversion.

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