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"Office sets up trial for 2000 glitch Tarrant County District Clerk Tom Wilder and his staff plan to avoid the predicted computer woes "

By Karen Rouse, September 6, 1998

Reprint Courtesy of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram

FORT WORTH - John Doe gets a citation from the Tarrant County District Clerk's office saying he has 20 days to respond to his wife's petition for divorce, or face a default judgment.

But the citation letter is dated Jan. 1, 1900, which poses a bit of a legal problem. "The guy could come in and say, 'I didn't have timely service. It was a hundred years late," quipped Clete McAlister, operations manager for the district clerk's office.

Such could be the scenario in what has become known as the year 2000 problem - concern about what may happen if computers read the last two digits of the year 2000 as the year 1900.

District Clerk Tom Wilder's staff has been preparing its computers to read the year 2000 accurately for more than a year, said Doug Gowin, information systems coordinator for the district clerk's office.

Yesterday, to see how his office would fare, Wilder created a "virtual day." He propelled several computers 481 days into the future by setting their clocks to the date of Jan. 1, 200.

Four staff members then entered hypothetical data, issued citations, collected fees, and calculated receipts for past civil, tax and family court cases. There was one minor snag, but the system didn't shut down.

"I was pleasantly surprised," Wilder said yesterday.

Glitches could occur if the computer incorrectly calculates such information as a person's date of birth or the amount of time he's been in jail. Anything that is time sensitive, from elevators to air conditioning systems, could possibly shut down, Gowin said.

Rick Lynn, database analyst for the district clerk's office, said they identified every area in which the year appeared in two digits and expanded it to store four characters. It has worked since August 1997, he said.

Gowin said the district clerk's computers are prepared to read four digit dates through the year 2300.

The systems updated in the district clerk's office included the 9-year-old Judicial Information Management System (JIMS), which the public uses to research civil or family court cases the Criminal Information Management System Online (CIMSON), which provides information on convictions and probations and a remote dialing system that allows attorneys, the media, bail bondsmen and officers to check cases from remote locations.

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