Press Statement - December 23, 1999

PS 99-25
Media contact:	Mary Hanson	(703) 292-8070	mhanson@nsf.gov

Statement by Linda Massaro
Chief Information Officer, National Science Foundation

On Y2K Readiness

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is ready for the year change. We have to be; the nation's scientists and engineers depend on us. We fund the nation's basic scientific research at about 2,000 institutions nationwide - each year handling some 30,000 proposals and conducting about $3.5 billion worth of electronic financial transactions. As we learned during the government shutdown of 1996, if our grant-processing machinery comes to a standstill, people notice. Fortunately, that's highly unlikely to happen due to Y2K.

All NSF's mission-critical systems were validated as Y2K compliant well before the federal government's deadline of March 1999. By August 1999, we had fixed or replaced all non-mission critical systems that were not Y2K complaint. This means that NSF will be able to process proposals and administer grants without interruption.

I am happy to say that the nation's search for new knowledge should continue unimpeded into the Year 2000.