Although a recent federal law reduces this exposure, not everyone believes candor is advisable. Moreover, definitions of Y2K compliance are elastic, despite efforts to make them more precise. Furthermore, seemingly identical pieces of factory-made equipment can have different versions of the same chip. That means that if a Coast Guard office has five of the same fax machines, for example, testing one of them isn't enough. All five must be tested.
More complex machinery tends to have more chips.
A single huge crane in a port could have 150 chips, federal Y2K czar John Koskinen told an audience last year. Some organizations reportedly have been pleasantly surprised to find that their embedded-chip problems were less serious than had been feared, but the chips still need to be checked. But his agency is in no position to test or repair all the 7,500 vessels, many of them foreign, that visit U.S. ports. The CIO nonetheless must worry about whether some of them may lose all power, find their navigation systems inoperable or be unable to communicate with port officials. He has launched a series of Y2K meetings to spread the word among shipping companies about the problem and the solutions.