Court system well on its way toward being certified as ready

By SCOTT NORTH Herald Writer

If you are a criminal who is hoping the Y2K bug will zap your court records into oblivion, you may as well be wishing for a visit from the parole fairy.

Court records in Washington are not only kept on paper and microfilm, but also on a statewide computer network that links district, municipal and superior courts to a computer in Olympia.

And tests show that the computer system is well toward being certified as capable of operating as the calendar rolls over to 2000, said Rick Coplen, director of information systems for the state Office of the Administrator for the Courts.

"By the end of this month we will have certified the entire system," he said.

The Y2K problem occurs in computers that read only the last two digits of the year in dates. Such computers could read the year 2000 as 1900 and malfunction.

The Judicial Information System links courts in all of Washington's 39 counties through four different databases.

State officials have been working with their counterparts in the counties to assure that computer equipment and software will operate when 2000 arrives, Coplen said.

The court computer system not only tracks when cases are filed in the civil and criminal courts, but it also catalogs their progress, records their outcome and maintains detailed hearing schedules.

State officials have used a portion of their computer that links the judicial information system together to run tests to ensure those functions will continue when 2000 arrives, Coplen said.

"That's not to say there couldn't be problems," he said.

There could be isolated difficulty in counties that haven't upgraded hardware and software that are part of local area networks.

In Snohomish County, that process has been ongoing for months.

Coplen said he believes hype about the Y2K bug has become overblown.

"My guess is that after (Jan. 1) 2000 you are going to find that in general, things are going to work," he said.

-- Norm (nwo@hotmail.com), May 31, 1999

Answers

That's WONDERFUL news, Norm. I was hoping at least they'd get THIER act together so that the rest of the country would be able to demand something be done with Billy-Blow Job and his side-kick, Monk-Gougin' Gore. I feel better already!

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), May 31, 1999.

Good - 49 more states to go, couple of federal level courts, a few thousand county and city courts......surely this isn't the first court that you've found who's "almost" ready - see, they're not quite finished yet are they?

Damn - you've discouraged me again. Guess this means, you've proved no court nationally is y2K compliant, since you haven't found any others, have you?

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), May 31, 1999.