The Year 2000 approaches and brings with it a vast, global challenge unprecedented in history; a challenge created by the computer-dominated society that has surrounded us with astonishing speed. In short, a challenge remarkably simple in its origins, but deviously difficult to contend with.

The question is-when the calendars switch from 1999 to 2000, will all our computers respond correctly? Will the date-dependent computers we've all come to depend on continue to function?

The banking industry throughout the United States has been seriously working on the "millennium bug" for more than two years. Bankers all over the country are doing whatever is necessary to make sure every customer's account will sail through New Year's Day, 2000, clearly, smoothly and without problems.

I think it's important to provide a little background. Many computer programs written in the past used computer language that labeled each year by its last two digits, a common shorthand in day-to-day transactions. In 1968, for example, the year was designated "68."

Nobody thought a program written then would still be in use 32 years later, but they're still here. While no one is still using the same programs, they are using programs based on the old ones that may still contain the seemingly insignificant few lines of code with year dates, buried within the millions of lines of computer code that make up a typical program.

This is what is causing all the commotion. The hard part is finding those few lines amid literally billions of others, and tracing them to see how they interact with other code lines. Talk about finding needles in haystacks. On top of that, it's hard to find computer programmers who still know how to read those old programming languages.

This "bug" is a big concern for banks in particular. Just about all the work done by banks has a date attached to it. Payment due dates, interest rate calculations, and tax requirements are all tied to a date in the past or the future. It's important to us to know those dates exactly.

The job is getting done. You should know that the banking industry is hard at work making sure that all of our systems work properly when the year 2000 arrives. Financial institutions are coordinating with state and federal regulators as well as with our external information technology service providers in a multi-phased program that identifies specific systems that could be affected.

Specifically, a few of the actions taken by First Tuskegee Bank include notifying customers of potential problems and what's being done to address these problems. In addition, state and federal regulatory agencies have performed a series of Y2K examinations to insure all banks are moving toward Y2K compliance in accordance with prescribed guidelines.

As I said at the beginning, this is a huge challenge that affects virtually all businesses, institutions and individuals, not just banks. But banks, as financial partners to millions of people, need to take the lead in meeting the challenge of the millennium bug. And we have. Such experts as the Gartner Group, in Connecticut, have rated the financial services industry No. 1 in Year 2000 readiness.