The year 2000 problem: a defense perspective.

• Author: Olmsted, Betty Ann

You and your clients have heard about the dire things that will happen on January 1, 2000, but are they doing anything about it

DIGITAL technology permeates all sectors of business and industry, and, according to the politicians, the information superhighway will build a bridge for entry into the new millennium. Under that bridge, however, may be a ticking time bomb that can literally set communities, business, and government back a hundred years.

That time bomb, often called the "Year 2000" virus or bug, resides in the very technology that allows us to work effectively and productively. Unlike other computer viruses created by hackers wanting to invade and wreak havoc with computer systems, the Year 2000 "bug" is the unintended legacy of old design compromises. Its destructiveness, however, is expected to spread like an unchecked disease, "infecting" billions of digital programs, products and services worldwide.(1)

WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?

Because most computers have not been programmed to distinguish between 1900 and 2000, the dawning of Year 2000 promises to confuse every sector of society that uses computers and microchips. One second past the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2000, the Year 2000 bug could infect anything that contains date-formatted digital technology, including mainframes, personal computers and products that run off hidden computer microchips. Some will produce erroneous results, while others will work sporadically and output random data.(2) Some will crash completely.(3)

Given the global dependence on computers and microchips, the scope of the Year 2000 bug could be immense--"scrambled" databases leaving police departments unable to track known criminals: federal income tax bills based on 99 years of work: lapsed insurance policies created by erroneous insurance company records: passports issued in 1999 rejected as expired: enormous long-distance billings showing 100-year-long phone calls made at midnight, 01-01-2000; dairy products erroneous discarded by plant control systems that assume they are 100 years old; pension payments undelivered owing to miscalculations of eligibility; security systems that won't let you in your office because of a system error that can't process the year 2000.(4)

Despite the magnitude of the problem, few people realize the potential for disaster. That may be because the problem itself appears deceptively simple. To many people, it's only a benign date problem that applies to very narrow applications. Unfortunately, however, the Year 2000 bug poses a serious problem that can affect everything with a computer chip in it, disrupting our personal and work lives.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

The Year 2000 virus arises from computer and software designs dating back to the early days of mainframe computers and PCs. Back then, computer memory and hard-disk storage were very expensive, and it made economic sense to free up space by reducing a four-digit year code to two digits, assuming the first two digits of each year field to be "19." So calendar years were entered as two digits--for example, "72" and "81"--and understood by the computer to be preceded by "19." So the computer read "72" as "1972" and "81" as "1981."

When this practice began, no one thought the computer systems in use then would be operating into the 2000.(5) As usage increased, however, companies elected to expand, instead of replace, mainframe applications. Expansion was often developed by third parties, with few, if any, records left noting the changes. And in the interest of economy, software updates were designed to be compatible with earlier versions, instead of changed to recognize four-digit year codes.

Eventually, experts began to warn of a problem coming in 2000 when computers would not recognize the two-digit "00" year code as "2000." This meant that whenever "00" would be used to denote the year 2000, legacy mainframes would read it as "1900." And whenever the system would be asked to use "00" to compare, sort or calculate with values for other years, it could crash or malfunction, producing inaccurate results.

Fixing the problem, however, promised to be a daunting task, requiring hundreds of man hours to search through potentially millions of lines of code, to locate and replace two-digit Near fields with four-digit fields. Most mainframes, moreover, had evolved as "legacy" systems--that is, originally programmed in COBOL or other early computer languages--with missing source codes. The job of date field conversion became an even greater problem with companies being staffed with a new generation of information technology specialists with little expertise in early mainframe languages.(6)

To further complicate the problem, data entered into...