Everything has to be done manually,'' said Brian Parker, a Bingham Farms, Mich., attorney representing Produce Palace in a lawsuit against the cash register maker and a local vendor. The store says it's lost business because of the machines' inability to read some cards. Still, experts see a silver lining in the early problems if the troubles wake businesses from complacency. One-third of 873 companies worldwide surveyed by the Meta Group research group haven't even assessed their computer systems to see what needs to be fixed. The laggards include the auto, utility and insurance industries, says Bill Goodwin, who edits a New York-based newsletter on fixing the glitch.
Government has a lot more work to do, experts say.
To address the shortfalls, more than a dozen federal agencies are redirecting hundreds of millions of their technology budget dollars. But for some, the future is approaching too quickly. The departments of Energy and Labor, if they continue at current paces, aren't expected to remedy their problems until the year 2019. The Defense Department won't finish until 2012, and the Transportation Department is barely better with a completion date of 2010, according to a study released last month by the House Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology, which is overseeing the U.S. government's effort. We don't really know the extent of the problem.