Agenda Packets - 1999/02/01 - Laserfiche WebLink

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YEAR 2000 PROBLEM Encryption:It is possible to use binary arithmetic to compress dates expressed with four-digit years to occupy the same storage space as those with two-digit years. This approach gives the permanence of full date conversion without the need for more storage capacity, but it requires extensive reprogramming and is not intuitive. Encapsulation:The Gregorian calendar has an interesting quirk-- it repeats every 28 years. Since the Y2K problem can be seen as a problem related to six-digit dates at the turn of the century, encapsulation simply resets to 28 years earlier. The computer and its programs do calculations based on a 20th century date and then add the 28 years back in for display purposes. This approach gives a quick fix for situations where source code is lost or time has run out. But it does not account for religious holidays that don't follow the Gregorian calendar. In the end,it may be useful only in embedded process controllers in which the actual year is not important but day of the week is very important. A strategy for putting the appropriate technical fixes in place might look like this: Inventory all automated systems and equipment; test to determine which will be compliant,and which will not; prioritize the results; find out what remedies to apply; determine which applications can be fixed on time;and develop contingency plans for those that can't be fixed on time. But doing that is complicated by two factors. One is that there are many related areas to find and fix. In numerous cases, application software was developed on a custom basis, or at least heavily customized,to handle local government business practices. These custom applications can be difficult to maintain,and some are too old to change. Even a medium- sized local government or business could have millions of lines of program code, nearly any of which could use dates. Invalid date comparisons could crop up in programs,training,embedded processors,and data. Beyond the computer hardware and software,too,there are all those other systems and devices that are controlled by microchips. The other complicating factor is time. It will take time to make all the necessary changes. The inventory alone could take six to nine months for a medium-size organization and longer, up to twice as long,for a large one,according to some experts. And that's only the computers and software. Figure another three months to inventory all equipment that uses embedded chips. Once the code that needs fixing is identi- fied, maybe 70 to 80 percent can be updated automatically. The rest will have to be read, a line of code at a time, by programmers, and manually changed. At an average rate of 3,000 lines of code a day,that is no quick job either. -6-