That’s the warning of Capers Jones, chief scientist at Artemis Management
Systems Inc. and founder of Software Productivity Research, which analyzes
software development and planning. Starting next year, date and data corrections
will dominate the software industry, said Jones, and the repairs
will cost $5 trillion
over the years 1999 to 2050. He predicted these problems, along with
Y2K, will damage the software industry for a generation. “The best we can
hope for is a quick recovery,” he said.
THE EURO
The European Monetary Union will begin its conversion to the euro currency
Jan. 1, 1999, and union countries are scheduled to phase out national currencies
in 2004. The euro conversion is the second largest software challenge
in the world behind the Y2K problem, said Jones, and it’s more
sophisticated. Instead of changing every date in a computer system with
a single deadline looming, computer systems have to be able to handle
the different ways the 11 union countries change over. Further complicating
the problem are individual companies that may convert completely
to conducting business in euros, or they may continue to
track their national currency while simultaneously using the euro.
Ed Severs, chief operating officer for ADPAC Inc., one of the older
companies designing mainframe computer systems, said there aren’t
enough programmers to finish both the euro conversion and the Y2K fix.
Jones said about 10 million programs, ranging from Microsoft’s spreadsheet
software, Excel, to specialized financial tracking software, would have
to be modified to handle the euro conversion. (Microsoft is a partner
in MSNBC.) France and Germany, said Gary Fisher, a computer scientist at
the Information Technology Laboratory at the U.S. National Institute
of Standards and Technology, are putting all their resources into
converting to the euro instead of Y2K. “They’re in a fix, I think,” he
said. “They’re going to be fighting fires everywhere.” The euro conversion
could cost between $150 billion and $400 billion spread among the
11 union countries, said Severs. Jones agreed and said 70 percent
of the cost likely would be borne by the union countries, with the
rest falling on companies around the world that deal with the union
and track European currencies. “If you’re a financial institution (doing
business in Europe), you’re going to spend between three and five
times what you did on Y2K,” said Severs.
GPS SATELLITES
In the period between the euro conversion and Jan. 1, 2000, the belt
of 24 satellites making up the Global Positioning System is programmed
to reset its date system. This could cause problems in navigation
and power plants, and even in the calculation of interest for international
financial transactions. The network, run by the Defense Department, allows
anyone with a GPS receiver to pinpoint their position on the Earth
to within about 330 feet. The satellites keep track of dates by measuring
the number of weeks elapsed since Jan. 5, 1980. Every 1,024 weeks,
the timer resets to zero; that will occur at midnight Aug. 21, 1999.
The satellites use the elapsed week count to account for variations
in the earth’s orbit and rotation. That’s why civilian Earth-based
receivers, not programmed to handle the rollover, could have problems determining
the location, Fisher said. “The receivers are going to have to become compliant,
either through a new chip or new software,” said Fisher. “And the satellites
that have the problems will have to be replaced.” GPS dates also are used
to synchronize some electrical power
plants and large international transfers of funds. Jones worries that
the rollover might cause some plants to quit working, and interest payments
on the transfers could be thrown off. For instance, if it takes a second
to transfer $1 billion between two banks in different countries, the interest
could be a few hundred dollars. But if one of the banks, relying on the
GPS satellites, hasn’t planned for the date rollover, its computers could
think the transfer took 20 years. The interest could be off by trillions
of dollars in that case. Because the rollover’s timing, computer
systems handling large financial systems will need to be checked for euro,
GPS date and Y2K compliance all at the same time. “It’s in the international
standards, so it shouldn’t be a surprise,” said Jones. “But Year
2000 should have been obvious, too.”
PHONE NUMBERS
Last year, Arkansas gained a new area code after decades of a
single code. In January this year, western Massachusetts gained a new
one as well. And new area codes seem to pop up weekly in the San
Francisco Bay Area, ground zero for the use of multiple phone lines in
the home. Usually, a new area code is a minor annoyance, necessitating
minor costs in reprinting stationery and business cards. But in about 10
years, the number of phone lines needed will exceed the capacity of a
three-digit area code with a seven digit phone number. Jones suggests a
five digit area code and a nine-digit phone number to allow up for to a
trillion individual phone lines — enough for several phone numbers for
every person on the planet. Problem solved? Nope. Millions of software
applications in the
United States can handle only three-figure area codes and seven-figure
phone numbers. To upgrade them all will be cumbersome and expensive. Any
lengthening of the phone number probably won’t be a problem for telecommunications
and directory companies, Jones said, but large private and corporate
phone lists will have to be updated. This could be a problem if the
program is configured to accept only the current format. Jones estimates
about 25 million software applications will need to be fixed.
SOCIAL SECURITY
And if all that weren’t enough, the United States might run out
of Social Security numbers. Numbers assigned to U.S. citizens are not reused
once someone
dies. The current nine-digit system provides a maximum of about 1
billion numbers. Since 1936, when the first number was issued, more than
381 million numbers have been assigned, with about 6 million new ones
issued each year. It’s easy to add a digit, but thousands of computer programs
that expect nine-digit numbers will have to be modified. Cost? Equal that
of the Y2K bug in the United States, Jones figures. The grandchildren
of today’s programmers will be solving that one, when the current numbers
run out around 2075.