PAROLEE COMPUTER WON'T MEET DEADLINE

SACRAMENTO (AP) - A state computer program that keeps track of
parolees who do bad things and helps bounce them back into the slammer
doesn't yet know the difference between 1900 and 2000.

It is one of the state's major computer systems that won't meet the
governor's Dec. 31 deadline to fix the pesky Year 2000 glitch that
could cause computer systems to give up and shut down, state high-tech
officials said Tuesday.

The result for the parole program, should the system fail sometime
next summer, could be human beings frantically trying to sort out the
mess of exactly which parolees are where in the bureaucracy.

Nearly one-third of 650 major state agency computers - up from 20
percent three months ago - are ready to deal with the glitches of Jan.
1, 2000, state computer experts told a legislative hearing Tuesday.

However, they said costs are rising, and a bunch of computer systems
will be facing what could be a massive deadline crunch just before
Christmas.

"There's a lot to do, and it's going to be very difficult to get it
done on time," Assemblywoman Elain White Alquist, D-Santa Clara, said
after the hearing.

"While progress has been made, the vast majority of the work remains
to be completed," said the quarterly report by the state Department of
Information Technology.

John Thomas Flynn of the department presented the latest progress
report to lawmakers on how ready crucial state computers are for the
problem known as Y2K or the Millennium Bug.

Many computer programs have trouble dealing with the date 2000.
Problems could range from simple mistakes to total failures. In the
early days of computers, when memory was tight, programmers wrote
dates with two digits - 1998 became 98. When those programs hit 2000,
many don't know if it's 1900 or 2000.

Gov. Pete Wilson last year ordered state agencies to have computer
systems that perform important tasks - dubbed "mission critical" by
the governor - fixed by Dec. 31, 1999.

Flynn told lawmakers that the two-thirds of those systems that aren't
yet finished are nonetheless somewhere in the development or testing
process.

Nearly all say they will meet Wilson's deadline. However, an increased
number of them, nearly half, have pushed their completion date into
December and that could make it difficult for them all to finish their
crucial and thorough testing at once, he said.

"We can't test 250 to 300 systems at once. That will put a strain on
our systems," he said.

Mary Winkely of the Legislative Analyst's office warned that the
December crunch could be even worse. The final testing phase is taking
longer than anticipated, she said, while at the same time, departments
are decreasing their testing time to meet the deadline.

"There's a large potential it (the Dec. 31, 1998 deadline) won't be
met by departments even though they say they will meet that deadline,"
she said.

Flynn said fixing the state's major computers is costing $243 million,
up $4 million from the last estimate three months ago. He warns that
price tag is by no means final or complete.

"I think we should be prepared to see some changes, and it's not going
to go down," he said.

A handful of state computers won't have their systems fixed until next
year, a few short months before their crucial failure dates, when they
have to begin processing information containing the year 2000.

Checked-by: Rich O'Grady