Study Says County Is Mostly Prepared for Year 2000 Bug

Orange County is generally well-prepared to handle the looming year 2000 computer crisis, but progress is uneven and local government agencies are expected to spend at least $15 million preparing for it, grand jurors concluded in a report released Friday.

“The grand jury found certain allegations of progress were optimistic, milestones allegedly achieved were not actually achieved, and testing was underemphasized,” the report concluded.

“Agencies just now beginning to plan for the Y2K problem are finding that they are very late,” jurors concluded. Their report listed five cities in the county that failed to provide the grand jury with formal plans: Buena Park, Costa Mesa, Cypress, Laguna Hills and Laguna Niguel.

Costa Mesa City Manager Allan L. Roeder said miscommunication with the grand jury led the city to submit an incomplete response to the survey. The city has had a master plan to address the problem for two years and has made progress, he said.

“Earlier this year, we changed our local government computers, the software and hardware, to be Y2K compliant,” Roeder said. “And next month, we will be going to the City Council to get funds for the public safety computers.”

The other cities listed could not be reached for comment Friday.

Variously known as the Y2K or millennium bug, the problem results from the inability of some computers to recognize dates past 1999. Because some computers, especially older mainframes, calculate years only with two digits, they cannot tell the difference between 2000 and 1900. Computer experts have predicted the bug will cause problems ranging from minor inconveniences to major computer failures as the new millennium approaches.

The Orange County Grand Jury surveyed 102 agencies, school districts and cities to assess the status of government computers in the county.

“We are mostly in pretty good shape,” said grand juror Bob Geiss, who chaired the committee that tackled the issue. Local governments will have spent $15 million to $17 million to fix the problem by the turn of the century, the report said.

But despite the upbeat evaluation, the panel declared agencies cannot afford to treat the problem lightly.

Failure to fix the problem would mean, for example, that the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, which relies on a computer-assisted dispatch system, would have to switch to a manual system.

The department has two plans to address the problem, according to the report. One is a short-term software solution called a “window patch,” expected to be complete by April 1999. And eventually the department will replace its entire computer-assisted dispatch system with one that is Y2K compliant.

Geiss called the likelihood of both plans failing very slim.

“I think they are well ahead on their way to solving their problems,” he said.

Lt. Hector Rivera, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman, said the department is pleased with the grand jury report.

“We have worked closely on this problem,” he said. “We were the first agency in the county to successfully complete a Y2K testing of a major system.”

According to the report, however, not all agencies are prepared to handle the problem, based on their responses to the survey.

“Responses ranged from detailed plans [to] nonspecific comments like ‘We’ve got everything under control’ to ‘We’re starting to work on it,’ ” the report said.

It added, “None of the exceptions are critical to overall county operations and safety. But a lack of compliance may be disruptive to local operations in some cities and school districts.”