Some Key Facts and Events in Y2K History

Y2K costs will reach $75 billion, predicted Peter de Jager in the Sept. 16, 1993, issue of Computerworld.

Y2K repair costs will reach at least $100 billion and may go as high as $114 billion -- $365 for every man, woman and child in the U.S., reported the U.S. Department of Commerce in November 1999.

The estimated worldwide cost of fixing the Y2K bug, according to analysts: Cap Gemini America Inc. -- $858 billion; Gartner Group Inc. -- $600 billion; International Data Corp. -- $300 billion.

• Hurricane Floyd caused infrastructure losses of $82.4 million, insured losses of $50 million and other losses of about $2 million, officials said, according to a Nov. 30, 1999, Reuters report.

• Initial estimates on the Turkish earthquake suggest it will cost $8 billion to repair the quake's damage, reported the International Herald Tribune on Dec. 2, 1999.

• The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that the cost of crop losses in the eastern part of the country due to the 1999 summer drought will be $1.1 billion, according to the Gannett News Service on Sept. 1, 1999.

Y2K projects caused changes in vacation policies at 43% of 150 large companies, with 97% restricting December and January vacations. Yet 40% weren't planning to reward IT staff with money or time off, according to an August 1999 Computerworld survey.

44% of major companies said they wouldn't have their mission-critical systems compliant by this month, according to a September study by Cap Gemini America.

Westergaard.com Inc. reported that only 75% of federal mission-critical systems would be finished by Jan. 1.

The White House's Y2K Information Coordination Center cost $50 million and was staffed with 200 federal workers.

40% of small businesses have done nothing about Y2K, according to the National Federation of Independent Business.

Financially wealthy companies were spending 5% to 8% of their IT funding on Y2K, while poorer companies were spending up to 40% of their IT budgets, noted a September study from Cap Gemini America and Rubin Systems.

The average mainframe or midrange system contained 510 date-related errors after remediation, according to a study by SEEC Inc.

Testing catches 30% of Y2K bugs, while independent validation and verification catches another 40% to 45%, reported a study by SriSoft Corp.

If a major brokerage has Y2K-related transaction problems on Jan. 3 ( the first day of trading this year), the Securities and Exchange Commission won't give out information specific to that company, Computerworld reported in the Nov. 22, 1999, issue.

Y2K could lead to $1.1 trillion in damages worldwide, with the U.S. cost estimated at $115 billion, not including legal and insurance costs, said analyst Nick Gogerty at London-based International Monitoring in October 1999.

Some Y2K budgets: Union Pacific Corp. -- $46 million; Merrill Lynch & Co. -- $525 million; Nabisco Inc. -- $42 million.

The labor crunch will continue post-Y2K: 1.6 million new IT workers will be needed between 1999 and 2006, according to a U.S. Department of Commerce report in July.

A December poll of 1,011 adults conducted by USA Today and the National Science Foundation found that just 7% of Americans said they expected major problems to result from Y2K mistakes, while 55% said they believed the effects will last only a few days; 42%, a slight rise from previous polls, planned to stockpile food and water; 21% planned to withdraw some money from their accounts; 34% (down from 63% a year ago) expected banking and accounting systems to fail; and 51% planned to avoid air travel on or around Jan. 1, though only 27% believed air traffic control systems would fail.

A November poll of 400 adults released by Hibernia National Bank in New Orleans found that only 7% of Americans were "very concerned" about Y2K and that only 11% of consumer and 8% of commercial bank customers planned to withdraw extra cash.

Gartner Group predicted that more than half of U.S. companies wouldn't achieve 100% compliance by the end of 1999 and that 15% of companies and government agencies in the U.S. would suffer Y2K-related mission-critical systems failures through the first quarter of 2000. Where failures occur, 10% will last three days or more.

How many people were needed to fix Y2K? Gartner Group estimated one man-year for every 100,000 lines of code. IBM reckoned that the average large company will spend up to 400 man-years on the problem. On average, 100,000 lines of code will require one year of full-time labor to correct.