Kendra S. Horn: “a few months ago our Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology held an extensive hearing on what…”

“a few months ago our Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology held an extensive hearing on what is known as the year 2000 problem. That is a problem for those who have inputted month-day-year in most computers over the last 30 years. Three decades ago, most computers had little capacity for storage. Thus, a 2-digit figure represented the year instead of 4 digits. In other words, instead of 1966, the year was entered 66. So when it comes to the year 2000 and the computer registers 2000, it will only register 00 based on the two spaces for the year software. Thirty years ago it was difficult to find space in a computer and somebody had the bright idea: Let's save at least a few bits of spaces when we put dates in by inputting only the last part of the date, not the century part of the date. Mr. Speaker, this will be a major problem. It is estimated by Gartner Associates, a major consulting firm, that it will take $600 billion worldwide to solve this problem.”