Dates are critical to any computer system.
Nearly 98 percent of all computer processing is dependent on at least one date-controlled process. How computers interpret dates beyond 1999 is where the problem lies. A future date has always been larger than a past date. A focused effort to inventory all of the bureau's data systems and data files that could be affected was completed last November. More than 4,200 program elements were identified which need to be converted to accommodate 2000 processing.