Wednesday, 29 July 1998

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Retired computer programmers to be sought in battle of Y2K bug

WASHINGTON - Two senior citizens' groups will recruit retired computer programmers to go back to work finding ``year 2000'' bugs in old computer systems, the head of the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion announced yesterday.

The American Association of Retired Persons will conduct an ``aggressive outreach campaign,'' assisted by the National Council of Senior Citizens, said John Koskinen.

Koskinen was appointed by President Clinton in February to lead the federal effort to minimize disruptions to the government and the economy from the problem.

Many computers record the date as a 2-digit number and will recognize the day after Dec. 31, 1999, as Jan. 1, 1900. The resolution of this problem will involve the reviewing of millions and millions of lines of computer programs, and finding all the places where date information is stored. Some of the programs were written decades ago, some in computer languages no longer widely used.

AARP spokesman Ted Bobrow said, ``Many people think you have to be 20-something to understand this stuff, but there are people who've been working on it for 30 or 40 years.''

Some industries are having trouble finding the programmers they need for the job. Koskinen yesterday launched a public campaign to improve awareness of the problem and unveiled a Web page (http://www.y2k.gov) with a job bank maintained by the Labor Department, for potential employers and employees to register.

``The money is good, and it's an opportunity to go back into the work force for a finite amount of time, an opportunity to be useful, to make a difference,'' said AARP staff member Deborah Russell. She said people who had programmed in early computer languages such as COBOL and FORTRAN were in high demand.

Kosikinen also said that a bill would be introduced in Congress today to make it easier for companies to share Y2K fixes without fear of liability suits if the fixes cause new problems. The bill would make companies liable only if they knew the information was false or had reckless disregard for its accuracy.