STORY:
New Year's Holiday Change Rejected

White House says no on moving the New Year's Holiday because of Y2K bug fears.

The White House has rejected a proposal to give computer experts extra time to fix the Year 2000 problem and move the federal New Year's holiday to Jan. 3.

Since New Year's Day is a Saturday, backers of the plan had urged the government to recognize the holiday the following Monday giving programmers and extra day to resolve problems before employees returned to work.

But, according to an Associated Press Report, the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a new report that Clinton's top Y2K experts rejected the plan as "unwise".

"It would require extensive reprogramming of systems to account for the change that would only add to the burden of Year 2000 work," the OMB said.

The OMB also raised it's forecast of federal Y2K fixes to $8.06 billion, up $1.3 billion than it predicted just three months ago.

The report also said 93% of the government's 6,190 most important computers have been repaired, replaced or never were vulnerable, up from 79% in February.

Fourteen federal agencies said all of their most important computers were prepared. Ten other agencies-including the departments of agriculture, commerce, energy and justice-still have unfinished work.

Source: Associated Press / USA Today

DATE: 6/18/99

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