National Association of Counties - Nov. 1998 Survey

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The National Association of Counties did a Y2K survey of its members in November. 49% of the counties responding did not have countywide plans for addressing Y2K issues. County population seems to make a big difference in whether or not a plan is in place.

http://www.naco.org/programs/infotech/y2k/survey/exec.cfm

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Strategic Plans

Two hundred fifty (50%) of the responding counties have a countywide plan to address Y2K issues, but 245 (49%) do not. Of the 16 counties with populations above 500,000, all but one have already prepared a countywide plan, while 74 of the 119 counties below 10,000 have not. Thirty-nine percent (197 counties) said that their plan was developed by in-house staff and 71 (14%) said that they used private consultants to develop their plans. Thirteen indicated that state agencies helped develop their plan and 2% said that a regional development agency assisted them with their plan development. All but one of the counties in the largest population group are using in house staff to develop their plan, and some of these are also using private consultants. In the mid size counties, with populations between 100,000 and 250,000, 38 report that they are using in-house staff, while 10 report that they are using private consultants to develop the countywide plan.

Ninety-one percent of the responding counties have assigned the responsibility of overseeing Y2K compliance for the county to a project leader and the majority of these project leaders are assigned to the finance and administration department. Twenty-six percent of the counties have assigned an information technology department person as the project leader and 27% have assigned leaders from various other departments. Board of County Commissioners and the County Clerk's office tied with 32 responses each in the other department category. Many counties are assigning individuals to oversee the Y2K compliance based on their skills and expertise rather than their departmental work assignments. An interesting statistic from this question is that 69 of the counties in the smallest population group report that the person with the responsibility of overseeing Y2K compliance is from the administration and/or finance department and only two counties have assigned an IT employee with this responsibility. This compliance assignment is similar in the population groups 10,000 to 14,999 and 25,000 to 49,999, with nearly three out of four counties reporting similar administration and/or finance staff assignments.

Nearly half of the respondent counties (47%) have already identified 10 or less computer applications that need to be either repaired or replaced, while 6% (29 counties) have identified more than 100. Interestingly, 10% (49 counties) report that they have found no systems that need repair or replacement.

In response to the question requesting information about the percentage of system assessment that has been completed, thirty-six percent (179 counties) indicated that they have completed their system assessment. Twenty three have none of the assessment completed, while 65 (13%) are between 50% and 74% completed and 142 (28%) have completed between 75% and 99% percent of their assessments. Fifty four counties provided no response to the question.

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-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), March 22, 1999

Answers

Damn. Bad news - even for Nov reporting dates.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), March 23, 1999.

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