DLA´s year 2000 remediation program: managing organization-wide conversion and compliance

The potential for wide spread computing error attributed to the calendar change over from December 31, 1999 to January 1, 2000 has been described as a millennium crisis, catastrophe and a virus. For any business with computing systems incapable of correctly identifying, manipulating, or calculating dates outside of the 1900-1999 range the problem is a daunting and expensive challenge. Within the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) we believe the problem is very serious-what we call mission critical-and we have treated it as such in planning and executing the largest maintenance effort we´ve ever undertaken. DLA kicked off a formal Year 2000 project in November 1995 with nearly a full year of planning, preparation and piloting. The paper discusses our Year 2000 initiative and experiences in raising awareness and in assessing, renovating and validating our systems. Our program, built upon available industry research and our own experiences, has been modified as we have gained fresh insight and assimilated new lessons learned