Millenium meltdown.

• Author: Bourquard, Jo Anne
• Position: The Year 2000 transition problem

You may have been born in '35, '43 or '58, but when '00 comes along government computers may decide you're dead.

The 20th century witnessed the dawn of the computer age. Computer systems have now become an integral part of government and business operations. The dawn of the 21st century, however, could bring about a catastrophic computer shutdown.

At 12 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2000, computer clocks will advance from the year 1999 to 2000. But the software and hardware for many systems (as many as 80 percent of government and corporate computers worldwide) cannot support this date change. Instead, these clocks may go backward in time to 1900. Older computer systems, designed to conserve storage space, use only a two-digit reference, e.g., 96 for 1996. Realizing this potential for disaster, newer systems use four digits to represent the year, which makes it possible for the computer to distinguish the century.

Experts agree that the approaching date change is a significant threat to government and business operations. Computer systems using a two-digit year reference may miscalculate ages, erroneously extending or denying benefits, licenses and permits. A system using the two-digit year could calculate the age of an individual born in 1970 by subtracting 70 from 00, with a result of minus 70 years of age. This could trigger the computer to assume the individual is dead and deny a driver's license renewal or, if the minus is ignored, initiate Social Security benefits. All kinds of business and government information and services - banking and finance, court dockets, parole and sentencing, employee, medical and academic records, insurance policies, tax payments, accounts payable, and inventory records - will be affected.

Fixing the problem is not easy. The National Association of State Budget Officers says states have three options: rewrite, replace or renovate.

For some computer applications that can't be easily replaced by new software, rewriting or renovating will be the only option, and it will be complicated and expensive. New software tools have been developed to expedite conversion, but none is a "silver bullet." IBM estimates that 70 percent to 90 percent of customer programs will be affected, requiring changes in 4 percent to 6 percent of the lines of code. Costs could run from $1 to $2 a line, but that doesn't include testing, which experts agree may be the most time-consuming and costly part of the effort. The Information Technology...