WASHINGTON-Legislation to protect companies from liability if they share erroneous information about solutions for the so-called millennium bug, proposed last week by President Clinton, won the support of the chairman of a special Senate committee on the Year 2000.
At a National Press Club luncheon address on Wednesday, Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah) said he supports Clinton’s “Good Samaritan legislation” but he is waiting for Sen. John Kyle (R-Ariz.) to draft legislation. Bennett did not know to what extent the Good Samaritan legislation comports with what Kyle is doing.
The Good Samaritan legislation hopes to promote more open sharing of Year-2000 information by shielding parties from liability claims based on the sharing of that data. Without that protection, for example, an industry group might avoid creating a Web site to share data fearing it will be held liable for information that turns out to be inaccurate or not up to date.
That’s the good news. The bad news is Bennett gave any legislative solution only a 50-50 chance of passing before Congress adjourns.
The millennium bug results from a computer programming decision to make the year date field only two digits and program the computer to assume the first two digits were 19. At the turn of the century, it is feared computers will crash or work improperly because the computer will think it is 1900.
The problem could be catastrophic because computers don’t encompass just large mainframes, but other items like elevators also have computer chips in them.
Bennett said his role is to be the Paul Revere of the millennium bug. “But I am not ready to be Chicken Little. The British are coming, but I am not yet ready to say the sky is falling,” he said. He concluded his NPC appearance by saying that he hopes that on Jan. 5, 2000, editorials will be written saying the United States was foolish to listen to him because “nothing happened.” He warned, however, that unless action is taken soon, results could be dramatic such as patients dying in intensive care units because heart monitors that are feared to contain the bug could fail.
The telephone network is expected to work, according to Bennett, but “I wouldn’t guarantee that you could get a dial tone in Taiwan.” This is indicative of the real problem for the millennium bug-interconnection with global networks. The United States is further along than most nations in evaluating and fixing the problem but some of the nation’s most important trading partners, like Japan and Germany, are far behind.
The U.S. government is doing all it can to fix the problem, President Clinton said in an appearance on Tuesday at the National Academy of Science.
“We know first we have to put our own house in order … We’ve worked hard to be ready. I set a government-wide goal of full compliance by March of 1999 … I have met with the Cabinet and charged them personally to produce results.”
The President’s speech was the most extensive comment to date on the subject of the Year 2000 problem. Both he and Vice President Gore have been criticized for not sounding the alarms sooner.
Gore joined Clinton at the National Academy of Sciences and urged Congress to work in a bi-partisan fashion to cure the millennium bug. “Let me be clear about one thing … The Year 2000 problem is a management challenge and a programming challenge. It must not be a political football. We need bi-partisan cooperation to solve the Year 2000 problem, not political rhetoric,” said Gore.
