Clinton Orders Y2K Compliance

President Clinton issued an executive order for all government agencies to be year 2000 compliant. “The American people expect reliable service from their government and deserve the confidence that critical government functions dependent on electronic systems will be performed accurately and in a timely manner,” said Clinton in his executive order.

Unless reprogrammed, many computer systems will misinterpret the year 2000, which is entered into the computer as “00,” as 1900, rather than 2000, and compute erroneous data or simply fail. Clinton ordered that no critical federal program experience disruption because of the Y2K issue. He also ordered federal agencies to cooperate with state and local governments and private-sector operators of critical national and local systems, such as banking, telecommunications, healthcare, transportation and energy.

Clinton also established a President’s Council on Year 2000 Conversion, composed of representatives from each of the federal agencies. The chairman of the council and the director of the Office of Management and Budget will report to the president jointly at least once every three months on the progress of federal agencies. Clinton ordered all agency heads to ensure that the Y2K issue receives the maximum attention and the policies of the executive order are carried out.