ICBERG:  What is the Year 2000 Date Problem?

Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 10:28:52 -0500
To: "USGS Employees"<distribution>
From: "Kathryn D Gunderson,  Reston, VA" <kgunderson@igsrsparc4.er.usgs.GOV> (Kathryn Gunderson)
Subject: ICBERG:  What is the Year 2000 Date Problem?

To all USGS Employees:

The Information Council is sponsoring a communication mechanism called
ICBERG - Information Council Broadcast E-mail Resource Guide's.  It is
through this mechanism that we will inform and update all USGS employees
about information issues.  Below is an excerpt from an attachment to a memo
from Bonnie Cohen (DOI's Assistant Secretary - Policy, Mangement and
Budget) to bureau heads.  I believe it provides a good explanation of the
Year 2000 issue and would like to share it with all USGS employees.

What Is the Year 2000 Date Problem?

Much has been written about the impending disaster that will befall
organizations--both public and private--whose application systems treat a
double zero in the date field as signifying the year 1900 rather than 2000.
The two-digit year field format, for instance "96" rather than "1996,"
used in most software programs and data files causes meaningless results
when calculations are made using millennium dates.  Dates are critical to
computers and this problem is not of recent vintage.  It is the result of
years of work in developing systems on computers using code that was
written when developers tried to minimize the amount of disk space used (30
years ago disk space was a precious commodity).  The two-digit year format
was the result of computer programmers' cleverness to save two units of
storage; the problem resulted by the false belief that no program would
survive until the year 2000.

The dimensions of this challenge are enormous.   Given our reliance on
computers, the failure of systems to operate properly can mean anything
from minor inconveniences to major problems: licenses and permits not
issued; payroll checks not cut; personnel records malfunctioning; errors in
accounting and finance applications; constituent services not provided.  As
the Information Technology Association of America points out, "Clearly, the
Year 2000 conversion should be of substantial concern to executives in
business and government."

Si
date, compare dates, or perform other specialized tasks, the cost estimate
to fix not only legacy systems but newer client/server applications is
calculated in the billions of dollars.  While not every application and
system needs to be converted at once, organizations and Federal agencies
need to adopt a systematic approach to the conversion process.  A
"head-in-the-sand" attitude, a piecemeal process, or a decision to simply
pass the problem on to a newcomer, exacerbates the situation by reducing
the amount of time to manage the situation effectively.  Given this
situation will occur, early attention to the problem can allow time to
address the required testing, validation, and systemwide impact analysis
necessary.

To keep up-to-date on Year 2000 issues, visit our web page at:

http//www.usgs.gov/year2000

Please note that there is a link on that page to the DOI page, which is
extremely informative.