HHS Home Questions? Contact HHS Site Map

This is an archive page. The links are no longer being updated.

"Y2K preparedness is management job number one at HHS," said HHS Deputy Secretary Kevin Thurm. "We are completing our testing with partners to be sure that information and dollar flow will be uninterrupted by the new year's date change."

HHS agencies announcing completed end-to-end testing include the Program Support Center (PSC), which disburses two-thirds of all federal grant funds each year; the Administration for Children and Families, which is responsible for more than $35 billion in welfare and children's programs in FY 2000; and the Health Resources and Services Administration, which oversees more than $4 billion in programs including health care delivery and health professionals support. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced completion of end-to-end testing last month for its public health surveillance with state health departments and other programs.

The testing follows the charge of the President's Council for Y2K Conversion and the Office of Management and Budget to ensure that "high impact" federal programs demonstrate readiness not only for their own data systems to function in the Y2K environment, but also to function in tandem with partner organizations, including other federal agencies, state and local governments and major banks. The Y2K challenge involves ensuring that computers will correctly identify dates after the change from 1999 to 2000.

PSC plays a vital role in posting of grant awards and disbursing grant funds. In FY 1998 the Payment Management System (PMS) operated by PSC provided $165 billion in payments out to the total federal grant outlay of $246 billion. PSC has executed successful end-to-end testing that assures the posting of grant awards and funds disbursement processes will continue as normal operations into the Year 2000. The end-to-end testing required coordination of over 80 partners within federal agencies, financial institutions, grant recipients and their respective automated information systems.

In meeting this challenge, computer system clocks were advanced to critical Year 2000 test dates (January 3rd and February 29th) prior to the execution on normal grant awarding posting processes and funds request transactions. These transactions were tracked through the organizations and evidence was collected at critical stages in the process to confirm correct execution. PSC said the testing shows that grant award organizations can be confident that they can continue to post grant awards in the next millenium in the same way as they have done in this millenium, and that the grant recipient organizations will continue to receive the funds allocated to them in a timely manner. Grant recipient organizations, both large and small, can expect to continue to be able to draw available grant funds and receive payment when requested. Likewise, federal programs that are supported by PSC grants payment processes will continue to be able to disburse grant funds. PSC disburses grant funds for HHS and several other federal agencies.

In most cases the grant processing transactions employed are dependent upon the use of computer systems. A prerequisite for participation in this demonstration was that the computer systems used had been certified as Year 2000 compliant in conformity with the General Accounting Office (GAO) requirements. An additional prerequisite was that the system clocks of these systems could be changed to the critical Year 2000 test dates for the demonstration. This was done in a coordinated manner on separate test days for each of the two critical Year 2000 test dates.

The demonstration linked together a large number of interrelated systems, which collectively support the payment management process and verified that the process will continue to operate as intended in the next millenium.

The financial institutions that assisted PSC without compensation were Bank of America, Bank Boston, Fleet Bank, First National Bank of Bemidji, State Trust of Tennessee and United Missouri Bank of Kansas City.

ACF has two systems that were identified for end-to-end testing. One system supports the distribution of financial payments to all grantees. The other system assists states in identifying non-custodial parents who are delinquent in their child support payments. Testing of these systems was performed during July and September and all systems tested successfully. An independent team observed the testing and verified the results.

Following work end-to-end testing in the year 2000, ACF and PSC worked with state and tribal organizations providing child care, child welfare, low income home energy assistance (LIHEAP), temporary assistance for needy families (TANF) and child support services to test the distribution of financial payments to grantees. The test demonstrated ACF's ability to transfer funds to the PSC payment management system and for the funds to be transferred from there to the Federal Reserve Bank. At the same time, state and tribal organizations demonstrated their ability to request funds from the PSC payment management system and for the funds to be transferred from the Federal Reserve Bank to the organizations' financial institutions.

To assure that states will be able to identify non-custodial parents who owe child support, ACF also conducted an end-to-end test of the National Directory of New Hires (NDNH). The Department of the Interior participated in the test. Data containing the biweekly list of new hires and the quarterly wage file were transmitted to the Social Security Administration Data Center, which houses the NDNH. The data of all employees both newly hired and those already holding jobs was matched with parents who owe child support as listed on the Federal Case Registry, and a file was transmitted back to the Department of the Interior.

All of HRSA's five mission critical systems have been independently validated and verified (IV&V;) through tests performed by agency-contractor Computer Associates. The IV&V; tests confirmed all of HRSA's mission critical systems to be Y2K compliant.

The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network System, the extensive computer network that matches donated organs with patients around the country, is a life-dependant system that has been identified by the Office of Management and Budget as a High Impact Federal Program. The OPTN, operated under HRSA contract by the United Network for Organ Sharing, was independently verified as Y2K compliant on May 10. End-to-end testing of the OPTN is underway.

Also verified were:

• BCHDAnet, the unified information system used by HRSA's Bureau of Primary Health Care to track project performance of health centers and service obligations of National Health Service Corps scholars and loan recipients;
• The National Practitioner Data Bank, which tracks medical malpractice judgments and disciplinary actions taken against physicians, dentists, and other health care professionals, then reports the information to hospitals, health maintenance organizations, and other organizations that are required by law to query the data bank before hiring or issuing credentials to these health care professionals;
• The Health Education Assistance Loan Information System, which maintains the repayment histories of 48,000 health care professionals who owe a total of $1.5 billion on their federally guaranteed student loans;
• The Grants Electronic Management System (GEMS), is a new HRSA system that was designed Year 2000 compliant. The system consolidates management of all the agency's core grant functions--certifying grantees, tracking their performance and processing their awards--into one system. Through GEMS, HRSA manages its $3.4 billion in fiscal year 1999 programs, including community-based health centers, Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act programs, the Maternal and Child Health Services Block Grant and other maternal and child health programs, and health professions training programs.

###