Despite a congressional mandate, federal agencies appear reluctant to assume leadership in persuading Americans to forsake their familiar but outdated system of measures in favor of the metric system, government investigators say.

A recent report by the General Accounting Office found that with a scheduled switch to the metric system just three years away, federal agencies "have not demonstrated a commitment to conversion" by the end of fiscal 1992 as the law requires.The shift ordered by the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 affects just federal agencies and their contractors - and is only required "to the extent economically feasible." However, if the metric system is widely used by the government it could have a far-reaching impact on many U.S. businesses.

The United States remains the only major industrialized nation using a non-metric measurement system - a situation that has placed the nation at a disadvantage in global markets. In fact, Liberia and Burma, which recently changed its name to Myanmar, are the world's only other non-metric holdouts.

The metric system is a decimal system of weights and measures. The basic units are the gram, the meter and the liter. Larger and smaller units are defined by prefixes such as "kilo" and "centi."

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"Metric conversion will require a great amount of work," the GAO said, warning that failure to start planning now "may delay or prevent a timely and comprehensive conversion."

GAO investigators voiced particular concern about the lack of intiative shown by the Commerce Department, which the investigators consider the lead agency in guiding the conversion.

"Commerce's allocation of resources to support the effort have been minimal, and officials at major agencies including Department of Defense, General Services Administration and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have said its lack of commitment has weakened their own efforts," the report stated.

Only six of the 37 agencies surveyed by the GAO had completed their guidelines for metric conversion and only one had drawn up a transition plan. No agency had developed time frames to show how much metric conversion it plans to achieve by the end of fiscal 1992.

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