Monday, November 30, 1998

Overcoming the glitch

The long-term viability of the Social Security program may be under a cloud of doom, but the Social Security Administration is leading the way among federal agencies in solving a more immediate goal - the Year 2000 computer glitch.

Rep. Stephen Horn, R-Calif., a House expert on the Year 2000 problem, gives the federal government a "D" overall for its efforts to fix the computer glitch that could seriously disrupt basic public services on Jan. 1, 2000.

The Defense Department received a "D-," while the departments of Justice, Energy, State, and Health and Human Services, which oversees Medicare, flunked outright.

But three federal agencies - the Small Business Administration, the Social Security Administration and the National Science Foundation - received "A's" from Horn. The Social Security Administration, he said, began working on the problem in 1989, eight years before most other government agencies.

Given this performance, maybe Congress should listen to the Social Security Administration's own suggestions for solving the shortfall the program is predicted to encounter in 2013.