The Year 2000 Problem arises from the simple fact that the two-digit representation for the year 2000 is "00." A great deal of computer logic only uses two digits rather than four to designate the calendar year (e.g., DD/MM/YY). The century portion of the date was frequently left off and that all logic assumed that the century was 19.

Computer programs use a two-digit notation to save valuable storage space and data entry time. Although this practice was common, it can lead to incorrect results whenever computer software performs arithmetic
operations, comparisons or data field sorting involving years later than 1999.

Although humans can properly interpret this representation, most computer programs will believe that "00" is less than "99." Many will assume that "00" simply means "1900." This causes a serious problem because, without the
leading century digits, a program has no certain way to differentiate between the years 1900 and 2000. Suppose, for example, that an employee was born in 1935 and is scheduled to receive retirement benefits in 2000. A simple computer calculation of that employee's age will provide the wrong result ("00" minus "35" = -35). Another problem originates from the fact that many systems were programmed to interpret the date 12-31-99 as an infinite maximum date. Currently, for example, active employee assignments are given a default termination date of 12-31-99.  Obviously, this system will need to be corrected to prevent  all of our employees from being automatically terminated at the end of 1999. A third problem is that the year 2000 is a leap year. Some date-processing routines may not recognize this fact. Century years are considered leap
years only when divisible by 400.

WHO IS AFFECTED BY THE YEAR 2000 ?

It is a significant challenge across the computer industry and for  any business, agency, institution or person using computers. Any system or program, including desktop software, could be affected if two digits are
used to represent the year.

The Y2K problems can have a serious impact upon numerous business functions, such as payroll, student loans, retirement benefits, a five-year auto loan beginning in 1996 or mortgage calculation, etc. Any computer calculation
that involves a date could yield incorrect answers. Some errors might be obvious and the programs would abnormally end; others might  quietly corrupt our files with  inaccurate data. A number of economic sectors could face electronic disruptions in January 2000, but the extent of the potential problem remains largely unknown because industry groups are just beginning to collect data on the problem's scope. The Y2K problem is real, it affects everyone of us. Just pick up any newspaper or magazine. They are full of vivid stories about the impending disaster coming  January 1, 2000 or possibly Monday January 3, 2000: banks cannot open, automatic teller
machines will not disburse cash, traffic lights cannot be  timed properly, airplanes cannot take off, power plants will shut down, hospitals unable to function, government benefit checks will be delayed. There are predictions of no food on store shelves in big cities, riots in the streets, hundreds of businesses will go bankrupt.

Surely, there's a lot of exaggeration in the press about the possible consequences of Y2K-related failures.  The ultimate consequences of such errors are, at best, unknown. However, there is also some truth in many
of these predictions: banking, security, health care, distribution, energy, telecommunications, transportation, and other critical industries will suffer at least some disruptions; investors, management, and workers will end
up in court over unresolved Y2K issues; and there is a fair chance both the US economy and the world economy will suffer while problems not solved in time by January 1, 2000 are being fixed.

WHY HAS THE YEAR 2000 PROBLEM HAPPENED ?

Several business and technological problems have combined to create "The Millennium Time Bomb".

1. Computing Resource Restraints

Main memory, disk space was at a premium in the early days of computing. Until recently, computer memory and storage were expensive and performance could be adversely affected by the manipulation of "unnecessary" data.
It made sense to save several characters in every date entry in a database, especially those containing millions of records.

Writing programs that minimized the amount of memory and storage used was desirable. So programmers, usually working with COBOL, hit the idea of using just two digits to record years in dates, so that 59 stood for 1959.
This convention was carried forward even when both memory and storage costs
began to plummet in the 1980s.

2. Applications

Have Lasted Longer Than Expected Programmers assumed that the applications they were writing would be replaced long before the turn of the century. Remarkably, many of those old programs are still in use.

Besides, once an application is working, there is reluctance to significantly change or replace it until forced to do so. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", has long been the unofficial businesses for many organizations. This makes short term sense and keeps the budgets looking good, but it sacrifices the longer term good of the company. With the year 2000 approaching, suddenly that long term is coming home to roost.

3. Lack Of Widely Accepted Date Standards

No standard representation of dates has been internationally accepted and implemented. For example, to an American, 1/4/96 means January 4th, 1996. To an Englishman, 1/4/96 means the first of April, 1996 - more
colloquially known as "April Fools' Day".

At least the year is common between these two. But even this has not been true around the world - China, for example, didn't standardize on the Gregorian calendar until 1948. Attempts have been made since the mid 1970s to set such standards, and even as recently as the late 1980's the ISO-8601 standard advocated the YYYYMMDD format for date storage. But the use of these standards was never internationally mandated and they never achieved critical mass in commercial acceptance.

4. User Demand

Computers are designed to make life easier for users and to relate to users in a manner consistent with their known world. Nobody wants to enter the century when he or she is not used to having to do so. The "Customer is always
right". There is little maneuvering room when the user is dictating the requirements for a new system. Historically, users have not thought to specify Year 2000 compliance.

5. Backwards Compatibility

The market has demanded backwards compatibility, basically because users have been reluctant to retire working applications in order to replace them with the latest models. Why should I have to rewrite my nice spreadsheet
just because a new release of Lotus 1-2-3 came out?

Every new application written is expected to maintain some form of compatibility with previous systems. Today, Windows 98 is faced with the burden of supporting not only DOS programs but also Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows for Workgroups and so on. All this has meant that out-of-date date algorithms have had to be supported by leading edge replacement systems.

6. Code Re-Use

It has always made sound economic sense not to reinvent the wheel. Virtually all new applications have algorithms and even code incorporated from previous systems. This speeds up development and usually results in more reliable systems. The re-use of algorithms which have a hidden date processing makes the year 2000 problem is so huge and why some people have likened it to an immense virus. As the algorithms are used and reused, so their deadly payload is spread through more and more systems.

7. Historical Data

The data is accumulated over the years and successive applications are built on this asset for analysis purposes. Changing the data means changing the applications accessing that data. And this has ramifications outside the
realm of the of the IT department. With the PC revolution, development and control of many applications has typically passed out of the control of the MIS professionals into the hands of the end users. So changing the core
corporation data means immense inconvenience and cost to all those end users.

8. Procrastination

By the end of the early 1990s, date problems began to appear. Boeing was the first company to report the problems: date calculations suddenly became problematic as calculated time periods began to fall into 2000.
Computers at Unum Life Insurance of America in 1995 automatically deleted 700 records from a data base that tracks the licensing status of brokers because some programs interpreted the expiration date as 1900. Some people talked about approaching the problems, but little happened. After all, the general impression was that it was an easy fix: you just had to put a 19 or 20 in front of those two-digit years to make things work. Why bother with a feature that nobody really wanted to implement anyway? A significant proportion of MIS departments have been putting the Y2K problem off. There are always other, more urgent, things to do, they reasoned.

9. Other Business Priorities

With the increasing pace of change in technology, the urgent has taken priority over the essential, in order to meet the user community's demands. There is little incentive to devote resources into pro-actively looking for new
problems.

10. Business Process Re-Engineering

Many MIS departments have been downsized to simply provide the required business functions of the company. The "slack time" that could have been devoted to addressing the year 2000 issue before it became urgent has
been deliberately cut out, in the search for leaner and meaner business processes. Furthermore, because they now lack the internal resources to handle the year 2000 problem, companies who have been through Business Re-engineering downsizing will be forced to outsource the Year 2000 fix project and to compete for increasing in demand programming resources.

Baltimore, MD. Sun, 11 Oct 1998
VACETS Column