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Posted at 11:07 AM PT, Jul 14, 1998
U.S. President Bill Clinton said Tuesday that his administration will submit to the Congress a proposal promoting more open sharing of year-2000 information among businesses and also outlined other related initiatives during a talk at the National Academy of Sciences.

Clinton was joined by Vice President Al Gore in his review of the federal government's efforts to prepare critical software systems for the date change to 2000. Many older software programs are written with two-digit date fields that could interpret "00" as "1900" and fail to make correct calculations.

The U.S. government is widely viewed as being ahead of other governments in dealing with technology issues related to the year 2000. But it recently received a failing report card from a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee that is charting progress.

The bill the administration intends to submit will offer legal protection to those who share information on year-2000 fixes or on whether or not a product or service is year-2000 compliant, according to a statement issued Tuesday from the White House. The proposal will not, however, address liability arising from failures of year-2000 systems or devices.

The president also announced that the U.S. Labor Department has established a year-2000 information technology job bank (http://it.jobsearch.org) to provide information on the supply of workers qualified to deal with year-2000 issues and the demands for such employees. The program is a joint effort between the department and the America's Job Bank/America's Talent Bank (AJB/ATB), which maintains information at a Web site (http://www.ajb.dni.us) regarding computer and high-tech jobs.

The administration further announced that the U.S. will contribute $12 million to support the World Bank's effort to increase awareness of year 2000 issues in developing countries. The World Bank is conducting 20 regional year 2000 conferences worldwide to provide information to developing countries.

The President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion will begin its "National Campaign for Year 2000 Solutions" later this month, the administration said. The campaign is designed to promote public and private sector year-2000 action and to encourage businesses and agencies to share information.

When he issued the report card on the government's progress, U.S. Representative Stephen Horn urged Clinton to "use the bully pulpit and inform the people of this nation" about the perils of the year 2000 and to make such issues a top priority. Horn is chairman of the House Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology.

The most recent installment of Horn's quarterly study found that the government has exhibited a "disturbing slow down" in its rate of progress in addressing year-2000 issues.

Nancy Weilis a Boston correspondent for The IDG News Service, an InfoWorld affiliate.

Related articles: "U.S. government gets failing grade on Y2K progress report"