These organizations include government programs that millions of Americans interact with regularly, such as the Social Security Administration and Medicare. Thirty years ago, when computing was in its infancy and electronic storage space was precious, computers were programmed to store dates cryptically.
Storage space is now cheap.
Some experts are predicting a disaster to occur and are actually laying in months' worth of food and other supplies in anticipation of a massive disruption of the nation's infrastructure. Year 2000-related problems have already occurred. For example, an automated Defense Logistics Agency system erroneously deactivated 90,000 inventoried items due to an incorrect date calculation. Despite the progress, GAO has warned Congress that because SSA receives massive amounts of data from others, such as state agencies and private employers, it risks data corruption from sources that are not Y2K compliant. SSA has taken steps with its data exchange partners to make sure all exchanges are Y2K compliant.