Five Governors Enter Regional Y2K Compact

Governors of five states announced their intent to share Year 2000 resources and information under a series of crosslicensing agreements that will allow states to swap materials and coordinate efforts to prepare the public for the millennial date change.

Governors of five states announced their intent to share Year 2000 resources and information under a series of "cross-licensing agreements" that will allow states to swap materials and coordinate efforts to prepare the public for the millennial date change.

The governors of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Virginia, New Jersey and Delaware declared a new joint Year 2000 "proclamation," which grew out of interstate collaboration discussed at a recent meeting of utility and telecommunications regulatory officials of nine states.

State officials want to see states sharing videos, brochures, workbooks and other materials developed to brief and prepare the public for possible fallout from the Year 2000 date change.

"The spirit of the proclamation is to encourage states to think regionally and not just statewide in preparing for Y2K," said Scott Elliott, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Information Technology. "There is no sense in each of our states replicating the same Y2K preparedness work when we can save time and resources by working together."