FAA Tackles Year 2000 Issue

<B> FAA Tackles Year 2000 Issue</B>

By Barbara Cook

<I>Washington</I> - FAA Administrator Jane Garvey is so confident that the nation's air traffic control system will meet all Y2K compliance deadlines that she plans to book a transcontinental flight for New Year's Eve 1999.

FAA is one of the most visible federal agencies affected by the potential problems posed by computers that weren't designed to transition to the new millennium. That high profile has caused Garvey to set up a special team charged with troubleshooting FAA computers, at an estimated cost of $185.6 million.

Watchdog agencies, however, are asking whether FAA has allowed enough time to isolate and repair the problem and whether, even if the fixes are in place, they will work as expected. Unlike many functions of government which could fail with little harm to the public, Y2K glitches in the air traffic control system could have tragic results.

In recognition of the scope of the work FAA must undertake, Garvey in February 1998 formed an agencywide Year 2000 program office which reports directly to her. She selected Ray Long, who already had successfully led the agency's air traffic Y2K efforts, to run the office.

The agency's agenda consists of an assessment of every system in FAA, followed by a renovation phase in which modifications are made to systems that are identified as needing repair. The validation and testing of individual components and systems will begin in October. It will include comprehensive end-to-end trials to test the interrelationships of systems and whether individual fixes of components will work together as a whole.

FAA has set June 1999 as the deadline for certifying compliance for all its systems. To meet that challenge, in addition to its in-house efforts, FAA has hired PricewaterhouseCoopers to add support with management and oversight functions.

Garvey reported in early September to the Senate Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem that the agency's computer system, which is central to operations of the En Route ATC centers, will be completely replaced by the year 2000. As a contingency plan, she said the agency has completed renovations to the existing equipment to enable it to operate, if necessary, into the next century.

The General Accounting Office issued a report in August voicing concern about FAA's tight schedule and its efforts to ensure the ability of the United States to accurately interface with foreign governments on aviation matters into the year 2000. Separately, DOT's own Office of the Inspector General issued a report in late August expressing concern that FAA's Y2K repair schedule "is still cutting it too close."

GAO's Joel Willemssen, director of civil agencies information systems, testified before a congressional committee on Aug. 6 that FAA still faces an uphill climb to achieve Year 2000 compliance. "It is doubtful that FAA can adequately do all of this in the time remaining," he said.

The implications of FAA's not meeting the deadline "are enormous, and could affect hundreds of thousands of people--through customer inconvenience, increased airline costs, grounded or delayed flights, or degraded levels of safety," he noted. Therefore, FAA "must determine how to ensure continuity of critical operations in the likely event of some systems' failure."

The Office of Management and Budget has set the deadline for final preparation and testing of Y2K compliance by all federal departments for March 1999--not June 1999, as the FAA plans. Long told BTN, however, that while the OMB deadlines are "very critical" to FAA, "it is important to note that our timeline for testing and implementation differs from theirs."

He said that the majority of FAA systems will be compliant by March 31, though not all will be fully certified until June 30. Long noted that FAA's computers are spread around the country, "so the logistics of addressing the Y2K problem for us are a little more involved." Nevertheless, the agency is moving "as aggressively as we can" to meet the March 31 date, to the extent that some of its technicians and specialists are working double shifts.

Responding to Willemssen's prediction that FAA "likely" will experience some system failure, Long stressed, "We do not believe that our systems will fail. We believe that our systems will transition to the new millennium in a routine fashion, based on a detailed, system-by-system accounting of the significant progress we have made to date, the overall plan we have in place, and the team we have in place to execute that plan."

FAA has 433 "mission-critical" systems; of these, 226 are in air traffic services and directly impact the running of the nation's airspace system, he said. All except three of the mission-critical systems passed the renovation stage by Sept. 30, 1998, and all will be certified by the June 30, 1999, deadline.

On Jan. 1, 2000, each system that handles air traffic will have a backup in place, Long emphasized, and there will be a contingency plan for the entire airspace system."This does not reflect a lack of confidence in our Y2K effort," he noted, but rather "the philosophy of redundancy inherent throughout the air traffic control system."

Long's deputy, Joe Morgan, has been charged with dealing with the international aspects of the FAA's conversion, which he told BTN has been underway for 18 months. U.S. carriers fly to 90 countries, he noted, and his team is "urging all of them to address the Y2K problem."

While a number of these foreign countries have simple ATC systems and Y2K compliance will not be as major an effort as in the United States, Morgan said the reality is that the U.S. doesn't expect 100 percent compliance. "That's why we are stressing contingency planning," he said. The International Civil Aviation Organization is expected to put pressure on a number of countries to cooperate in Y2K repairs. During the summer of 1999, FAA will "make an assessment on the status of the world and look at our options," he said. "Clearly, we can't wait until the last minute."

Garvey recently introduced resolutions at an ICAO meeting in Montreal calling for member countries to publish notices by Nov. 1, 1999, outlining their Y2K status, and for ICAO itself to publish assessment criteria for each member state. At the end of the day, though, the United States does not have regulatory authority over the compliance efforts of foreign nations. In recognition of that fact, DOT deputy secretary Mortimer Downey recently told the Senate special committee on Y2K that DOT and the State Department are reviewing whether there will be a need to prohibit air travel on Jan. 1, 2000, to parts of the world "where air traffic control is rudimentary.