Technology Bites Back: The Millennium Bug Promises to Take Its Toll on Technology Systems around the Globe

The Year 2000 problem, or Y2K in popular speak, has been called everything from the millennium bug to much ado about nothing. The scores of studies and hundreds of media reports to scope the problem, its associated costs, and possible implications have produced a wide variety of conclusions, ranging from "the end of the world as we know it" to a bump in the information superhighway. That there will be a global disruption is a given; the extent and magnitude of the crisis, on the other hand, still remain to be determined. Over the past six months, estimates of the global cost for correcting the Y2K problem have risen from $719 billion to $858 billion, an increase of 20 percent.(1) This makes Y2K the second most expensive endeavor the world has faced since World War II, whose total cost was approximately $4.2 trillion. Even the Vietnam War--estimated at $500 billion--cost less. Who will be hurt, how badly, and for how long are all questions that are impossible to answer. While there is no way to predict which nations will be most at risk, the United States is clearly ahead of the pack in its compliance efforts, followed by Canada, Australia, South Africa, and Israel. The United Kingdom has slipped from second to sixth place but is still well ahead of Germany, France, Italy, and Japan. Unlike earthquakes or floods, which occur with little to no warning, we know when the Y2K crisis will hit, which makes this disaster unique. We now have just a few months to fix the problem, test the repairs, and develop adequate contingency plans to mitigate possible failures. Few people still believe we have time to fix all our critical systems. Testifying before the Senate Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem, James Woodward of Cap Gemini, Europe's biggest software and services company, claimed that "only 83 percent of American companies expressed confidence in their mission-critical systems." (2) One of the reasons for their lack of confidence is the interconnectedness of the problem; it is nor a question of one thing going wrong, but the possibility of tens of thousands of little failures occurring all over the world. As Bruce Webster, chairman of WDCY2K-- a group of more than 2,000 Y2K experts from the greater Washington area--points out, "We live in a network of multiple, complex, interacting systems and it's hard to tell where one system ends and another begins. When things fail, we will be facing multiple overlapping failures, not isolated events." General Motors, for instance, has over 100,000 suppliers and vendors. If even one of these data exchange partners is not fully compliant, the whole system may become infected by corrupted data, which could result in significant errors or system crashes. Simple Mistake The Y2K crisis originated in a simple programming habit. Decades ago, memory space was very expensive--computer memory that might cost $5 today cost $5 million 30 years ago. As a result, most programmers allocated only two spaces to denote the date field. At the turn of the century when the last two digits roll back to 00, computers may mistakenly assume that the date is 1900, not 2000. Even though most programmers knew, even 30 years ago, that this would cause problems come January 1, 2000, most did not believe that the systems they were programming would still be in use. Dates are very important in computers since they are used extensively to make all kinds of calculations. For example, dates are used to determine who should receive Social Security checks, pensions, Medicare, retirement benefits, driver's licenses renewal, and tax refunds. In industry, dates control everything from manufacturing processes and just-in-time delivery systems, to maintenance schedules and assembly lines. The financial industry is most vulnerable, since it uses dates to control everything from trading to mortgage payments and credit card bills. No Quick Fix Even though the solution to Y2K seems technically simple--expanding the date field from two to four digits--the magnitude and the complexity of the problem is daunting. …