They are also concerned about the systems that bring us gasoline for our cars and run the electric power grid, the systems that heat and cool our buildings, our healthcare system from HMOs to heart monitors, and the systems that deliver government functions like Social Security, Air Traffic Control, and local police, fire and ambulance services. In each of these systems, information cascades from one system to another, and another. For example, the date might be used as the seed for a random number algorithm. Each component might depend on the correct operation of the systems that logically precede it. Failure of one program has the potential to disrupt the superordinate system to which it belongs.
Microprocessors run virtually every telecom system.
Arthur Gross, the former CIO of the US Internal Revenue Service, is less concerned about the hundred million lines of IRS application code than he is about the IRS's communications capabilities. The Achilles heel for IRS . The Gartner Group's Howard Klein states publicly that customer premises equipment is a critical concern. If the Year 2000 problem is not addressed from a network perspective, network administrators will be unable to access mission critical applications. Let's take it at face value, then, that the public switched network will remain intact and functional.