The single strangest thing about Friday's report that the District of Columbia's computer systems were about to become as useful as a Commodore 64 was how surprised everyone acted.
Officials darkly warned that the federal auditors' report of Year 2000's dire impact on city services should alarm the public. "The District remains in crisis mode," announced Representative Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican.
To be sure, the report was damning. Less than 1 percent of Washington's 200 key computers -- in other words, just one -- have been fixed so far. The rest aren't expected to make it in time.
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But none of this should come as a surprise. Washington boasts a city government best known for its unparalleled sloth and incompetence. A new report from the city's inspector general reveals the District is paying US$1.8 million a year for over 9,000 telephone lines -- one-third of the total -- that the government has never used.
In 1995, the city was in such miserable shape that Congress created a financial-control board to oversee all budgets and revenue. It didn't help. A 1997 report from the General Accounting Office, Congress' auditing arm, revealed that the city didn't know how many students were enrolled in public schools. "The Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights released figures differing from [Washington public schools'] official counts by more than 5,000 and 2,000," the report said.
As far back as last fall, Congress was warned that the city was in Y2K peril. The fire department and the city's reviled police force might be hamstrung because of communications and 911 failures, GAO said. Unemployment, tax, accounts payable, retirement, alarm, security, and a slew of other major computer-provided services were at risk, said the 2 October report, entitled "Year 2000 Computing Crisis: The District of Columbia Faces Tremendous Challenges in Ensuring Vital Services Are Not Disrupted."
So what's changed? Perhaps officials realized that 314 days left until 1 January 2000 leaves scant time for error. Another likely explanation is that Davis, chairman of the DC oversight committee that met Friday, realized that any problems in the city would affect his district in the nearby suburbs.
In particular, Davis wasn't pleased to hear that the District was over one year behind where it should be.
