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Trump Orders Government To Stop Work On Y2K Bug, 17 Years Later (bloomberg.com)
The federal government will finally stop preparing for the Y2K bug, seventeen years after it came and went. Yes, you read that right. Bloomberg reports: The Trump administration announced Thursday that it would eliminate dozens of paperwork requirements for federal agencies, including an obscure rule that requires them to continue providing updates on their preparedness for a bug that afflicted some computers at the turn of the century. As another example, the Pentagon will be freed from a requirement that it file a report every time a small business vendor is paid, a task that consumed some 1,200 man-hours every year. Seven of the more than 50 paperwork requirements the White House eliminated on Thursday dealt with the Y2K bug, according to a memo OMB released. Officials at the agency estimate the changes could save tens of thousands of man-hours across the federal government. The agency didn't provide an estimate of how much time is currently spent on Y2K paperwork, but Linda Springer, an OMB senior adviser, acknowledged that it isn't a lot since those requirements are already often ignored in practice.
Gotta keep track of those unsigned 32-bit int timestamps, they're going to creep up on you in 2038.
Seriously? Is there anything else they are preparing for that has already come and gone?
Well reputedly in 1803 the British government prepared for the potential invasion of Napoleon by creating a civil service position for someone to stand on the white cliffs of Dover with a spyglass and ring a bell if they saw Napoleon coming. The position was finally cancelled in 1945, 124 years after Napoleon died.
He most certainly not removing burdens with the new burden that government software will now have y2k problems again.
One thing the simpler man doesn't understand is that problems like Y2K (or 2038) don't go away once the date has passed. Too small storage containers used in already existing data won't magically transform. Someone needs to make that happen, each and every time old data is accessed. Do a study of things like census records, and you'll be hit by the Y2K bug.
The very preparation for Y2K caused additional problems. Uncoordinated preparation caused forms that suddenly changed from YY/MM/DD to mandatory YYYY/MM/DD at arbitrary dates in the late 90s.
This means that you'll run into the problem when handling and comparing data from the same sources from before 2000.
Relatedly, the "2038 problem" will also still be with us long after 2038, because of all the data stored in signed 32-bit time format won't magically transform. Someone needs to make sure it's done.
The regulations are probably too specific, and focus on the specific instance of the problem when a generic regulation[*] would have been better. But then again, politicians who couldn't see the bigger picture existed back then too.
[*]: Like "All data is to be converted to representations not subject to container size prior to processing, or a justification for and implications of the limited container size must be documented."
Among the effects, this could lead to a resurgence of BCD and CPUs who handle them natively again, which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.