House adds $1.6 billion to DOD Y2K funding

The House Appropriations Committee pumped an extra $1.6 billion in "emergency" funding into the Defense Department's efforts to fix the Year 2000 problem in its thousands of computer systems and to enhance computer security.

The Year 2000 funding consists of an "emergency appropriation that does not come out of DOD's regular budget," a spokeswoman said. An industry source said he thought most of the emergency funding would go to Year 2000 work rather than computer security because Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre "has made a strong case that [the Year 2000] is a national and computer security issue of paramount importance."

Hamre last week told the Senate Authorization Committee that the Pentagon has expended more than $1.9 billion "out of hide" to fix Year 2000 problems in its information systems. This has forced DOD to defer similar expenditures on the development of new systems, Hamre said.